Japanese finance minister cautions against changes to debt redemption rule

 extending a 60-year redemption period to allow more debt issuance and bigger spending.

Finally bigger spending and more spending, like current one is not enough.

a controversial plan to boost defense spending.

You mean double defense spending.

In the end they’ll stick it to the middle class.

"In Japan, the 60-year redemption rule is one way to secure fiscal discipline. 

 Ah ah ah. He made my day. It better to laugh than to cry I guess. Otherwise life becomes really hopeless!

seeking sources of funding

Public spending’s primary revenue source is public taxation, now or later so one need not search hard. Secondary sources of revenue don’t amount to much and may as well be ignored.

Redirecting existing spending towards new priorities would be the sensible thing to do.

"In Japan, the 60-year redemption rule is one way to secure fiscal discipline. We must think thoroughly about how the loss of this rule would be perceived,"

My perception is that it is ineffectual. 60 years is a long time, and when you have accumulated a quadrillion yen of public debt, and long term interest rates are looking to rise, whilst your central bank prints trillions of yen and buys up most of the newly issued JGBs on the same day they are issued, it frankly looks like Weimar Germany rather than a government of fiscal discipline.

I think another “way” to ensure fiscal discipline would be to charge politicians 20,000,000 yen per year when they spend beyond tax revenues. If they stay within tax revenues, give them the 20,000,000 plus a 30,000,000 yen bonus. I would bet then the government would demonstrate a lot of fiscal discipline. Performance pay.