16 posts
Can Japan cut public debt before it gets old?
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Today’s ratings downgrade by S&P for Japanese public debt has brought further attention to Japan’s huge and growing debt burden. Yet with each round of concern, there’s always a viable response that says “So what, yields...
Double Dip Alert In Japan
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Despite recent optimism about the apparent renaisance of growth in the Japanese economy, and the heightened sense of enthusiasm which surrounds the surge in economic activity right across the Asian continent there are considerable grounds for caution...
New Administration in Japan: Increasing Presence of the EU in Japan?
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It has been a while that Yukio Hatoyama, a new Prime Minister in Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), took his administration in September 2009 in Japan. Since Japan had four different Prime Ministers from 2007-09, I was not personally expecting much cha...
Asian Union Plans Attract Japan
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The plans for creating an Asian economic community grouping China, ASEAN and Japan have received an important boost recently. During his informal meeting in New York with Chinese president Hu Jintao, the new Japanese premier Mr. Hatoyama has proposed...
Japan Deserves Praise for Raising the Climate Stakes
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The newly elected Japanese candidate for prime minister has demonstrated political courage by raising Japanese climate targets for 2020. In his capacity as leader of the Democratic Party, he has indicated that Japan should reduce its C02 emissions by...
Fraternity Japanese Style
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Congratulations to the Democratic Party of Japan on their striking electoral win. As the world's second biggest economy - and a major investor in the UK - Japan matters a lot to us. As a concerned international citizen, Japan has also been determi...
That man again
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In a long line of EU summits with global counterparts, there is an EU-Japan summit on 4 May. As is customary, the European Council is represented by the presidency country which of course is the Czech Republic. And as is customary, the PM would l...
Japanese generosity
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Pakistan, a terrifyingly unstable nuclear state, is desparately short of cash. But at a donor's conference in Tokyo yesterday, over $5 bn was pledged to it over the next 2 years - a fifth of that from the Japanese hosts. Japan is facing an abysmal ec...
Japan’s Industry Reels Under The Slump In World Trade
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Japan’s economy certainly looks to be one of the worst case scenarios globally at the moment. Indeed, as Claus Vistesen puts it (in a very fine and thoroughly argued post - Engine Failure - that you can see here): “Final estimates from Q4...
Japan’s Exports Fall An Annual 49% In February
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Japan’s exports fell by a record 49.4 percent in February as deepening recessions in the U.S. and Europe, and a sharp slowdown in China hit demand for Japanese products around the globe. Shipments to the U.S., still Japan’s biggest market, dropp...
Japanese Land Prices Hit 1984 Level
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This from Bloomberg this morning: Japanese residential land prices fell to a 24-year low as job losses and wage cuts discouraged homebuyers, while tighter credit markets choked off funding for property developers. Residential land prices fell 3.2 pe...
Japan’s Industrial Slump Deepens In January
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Japanese manufacturing output fell in January by a record 10 per cent month-on-month while new job offers declined 18 per cent, reflecting the deepening recession in the world’s second biggest economy. Industrial production was down a whopping 30.8...
Japan’s “Unimaginable” Contraction
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Well, it isn’t only in Europe that we are having a hard time of things. Last week Kazuo Momma, head of the Bank of Japan’s research and statistics department, warned that Japan’s economy now faced an “unimaginable” contraction, and toda...
Japanese bloggers unite
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I met 100 Japanese bloggers tonight at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo to debate how the internet can fuel the drive to meet the challenge of climate change. The event will be at www.uknow.or.jp . The predominantly young audience d...
Global Perspectives focus on Japan-Africa Relations
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The June issue of the magazine 'Global Perspectives' focuses on the recent Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).According to Ramesh Jaura (IPS), who reported from the conference, Japan's priorities in Africa are to boost econ...
