Stimulus addict Japan gets huge fix from Abe

All these starry eyed reports laden with self-congratulatory attitudes make it seem like "stimulus" is some kind of advanced financial technique that requires deft handling and careful thought.

Governments have been debasing currencies since the dawn of time. It's the oldest trick in the book.

Need more money? Print some! Hey, so what if it NEVER WORKED before in the HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION!

Maybe if we call it something else, and pretend it's complicated, it will work this time!

If you want a strong, healthy economy, don't spend more than you take in.

So-called “Abenomics” has found favor with the markets: the yen has slid about 12% since the weeks before the general election to trade around 89 to the dollar on Friday.

If the yen slid about 30%, it will be nightmare for J consumers. Japan have to import most of the food, components and raw materials. Conventional theory is Japanese export will be cheaper due to low yen. However export goods need imported raw materials and components . If they are more expensive, completed goods will be more expensive too. Abenomic will be a disaster like Regannomic or Obamanomic.

The 14th emergency spending programme since 1999, which, according to a Mizuho Securities tally, takes the total spent to 75 trillion yen, is “just more of the same”, said Julian Jessop, chief global economist at London-based Capital Economics

Some quick math says that's, on average, one of these packages per year. And none of those did the trick. As Einstein famously stated, "the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result". Good luck folks.

A cancer patient given shots of heroin.

All these spending and borrowing only hurts the common people in the long run when loan payments come due. Look at Greece, I can understand the anguish and blame that goes around.

spend spend spend i wanna see 120¥ to the dollar

“This stimulus package will create demand and put upward pressure on prices,” says Masahiko Hashimoto. I don't like the sound of that. Our prices are high enough. Why drive them up even more?

Also am getting nervous at seeing all the LDP ministers sitting around and laughing whenever the TV cameras are on them. Are they already raking in the money? Why should they be so daggone happy. Nothing's happened yet ... yet something must be happening 'cause they're so happy ...

Great, give more money to construction companies so the rank-and-file high-school graduates on the ends of the shovels can spend it on hostess clubs, cars they can't afford and expensive nights out. Why doesn't the government sink at least some into high-end innovation? Japan has the brain power to have its own mini Silicon Valley, it just lacks the political will and innovative spirit to make it happen.

So I guess we pour concrete for another 20 years. Good plan, Abe!

It s difficult and painful to take the strong medicine of cutting off the drug of mass printing and debasing the currency, and it will look like a good idea for a while, but it will come back and hit us in the back of the head with a brick. It s those nasty international bankers laying the trap and Japan is again stepping into it as it doesn't see the noose tightening in the future when the big moneys crash it all and take it all. Better to change the system, be simple, get off the dollar standard, back the currency with reality and get back to farming also. Don't need millions of people pushing computers all day in prisons called offices. Where are the innovators, creative geniuses with new ideas for new lines of products... and ideas. Better to do like Gaddafi did and get off of international loans, fiat monopoly money , and back the currency with a mixture of valuable and precious metals, even rice if that s all you have.. ha

Um

Did any journalists make a half-serious attempt to quiz him on exactly in what way "this time, it is different"? Didn't think so...

Abenomic will be a disaster like Regannomic or Obamanomic.

Reganomics and Obamanomics are totally opposit in economic ideology. Reganomics a Supply Side vs Obamanomics a Demand Side. Abenomics is a somewhat Supply Side.

Abe needs to take a day off every now and then....

Reganomic wants the market to be wild. His wisdom is If the market is wild, prosperity will fall from sky. Reality is wild market wiped out the fortune and banks have run out of the money.

Obamanomic wants to bail out the failed banks. He wants to supporty solar industry without demand from market. Failed Banks are still employing over paid and incompetent staff. Solar industry has failed too. It is a double failure.

Abenomic wants to print money and spend the money like druken sailor. Druken sailor has regular income from the navy. Stimulus can not be implemented regularly because it has to be borrowed. Borrowers are loss making institutional investors which are losing billions from their business.

Public spending has been what lets Japan barely keep its head above water in the last couple of decades. Doomsayers keep predicting a fiscal crisis in Japan but strangely enough she is surviving with its unemployment rate at around 4% and the long term interest rate still at less than 1 % while holding more than 1100 billion dollars worth of USTB. And not even much affected by CDS disaster of 2008 either. Abe may be flattered by Paul Krugman's backhanded compliment. True, Japan pioneered the economics of stagnation. But GDP growth myth seems to have lost its appeal already. Young people these days prefer riding a bicycle as if the road is theirs to driving around a brand new car. Abenomics may be just another dose of such similar prescription which will bring a temporary lull to endure the stagnation. Not something to end it.