Japan's Economic Bubble and the Lost Decade, with William Tsutsui

[@reneperez2126]

As a commentator with no economics background all I see is a great presentation from someone who is well skilled in getting across his ideas

[@buyingmississippi6791]

what do you mean by that? He's just telling us how it is.

[@reneperez2126]

@@buyingmississippi6791 all im saying is that regardless of the content being presented, i think him to be a good lecturer , im not implying he is telling lies, spreading bullshit,having hidden agendas or wtvr am i not allowed to express a statement about something without it being considered ironic or something ?

[@stephenp1461]

@@reneperez2126 yes.

[@MikeLichtman]

Here in Jan 2021. The similarities with what's happening in US currently and Japan in 1985 is uncanny. I'd love to pick his brain on the current US financial situation. I think the Coronavirus definitely brought this mess up to a whole new level. I believe the fed and new admin will keep on stimulating the acconomy. I'm afraid that we may be in a similar situation of over stimulating and at a certain point of no return we will stop and try to reverse, thus all hell breaking loose with very few tools left to help us get out of it!

[@gamingradeon]

Speech starts at 4:40

[@CoolnCarin5241]

Thank you so much ❤️

[@thomHD]

Excellent lecture. This is from 2009 when gross national debt, as he says, was approx. 180%; today it is 236%

[@liars6495]

National debt is nothing , the real danger are foreign debts , over 90 % of Japanese Debt is home made , so all Japan has to do is to bailout themself

[@thomHD]

@@liars6495 That's an old chestnut. Foreign debt is of course a bad thing in the case of, say, Greece, but in the case of countries in reasonable fiscal health (The UK, France) it is closely tied up with foreign investment and innovations, not least the transition to green energy. Japan could technically 'cancel its own debt' yes, but it won't; doing so would lead to serious repercussions, likely another bubble-era-like crash as other economies around the world lose faith in it. Instead, the real picture for Japan is that taxes will continue to rise and rise, the infrastructure (at least away from Tokyo and Osaka) will be too expensive to manage, and more coal power stations will be built.

[@jackthorton10]

So what you are saying is… they are doomed to fall… real comforting

[@thomHD]

​@@jackthorton10 I've lived in Japan 6 years and the stereotype that the Japanese are insular and unconcerned with the outside is pretty much true, and too many people (or companies, hotels, estate agencies) still carry on doing things like it's 1990. Put it this way: Japan is doomed to be a tourist destination, but they will forever be too proud to put out English menus.

[@liars6495]

@@thomHD Lol Tourism Revenues make less than 1 % of total GDP , what are you talking about ? why dont you learn Japanese instead ?

[@brianmorrissey7847]

I am curious why he didn't include that Japan's central bank was being told to lower their interest rates by U.S. Treasure Secretary James Baker. They saw what was happening, and wanted to adjust, but told, "you fall under the nuclear arm of America"... a not so veiled threat to follow orders. This is taught in most Asian Studies courses as they basically did the same thing to a lot of Asian countries between 1970 and 2000.

[@edj5532]

Brian.... Most Americans are not aware that the US Federal Reserve controls the bank of Japan. The US is going down the same road of negative interest rates, better get out of debt.

[@TheGareth87]

And now it is the American's turn in destroying themselves from the inside. We will see if military superiority can protect financial hegemony any longer.

[@youtubait1]

He did….I listened to it twice end to end.

[@SY-jq4yw]

Great lecture by the Professor from U of Kansas, did not even pause for a breath.

[@patriceortovent3337]

After listening the all lecture It can be said that this speaker knows what he is talking about and is very articulate in his speech. Very informative and correct presentation about Japan and the social issues attached to it.

[@thparelli3]

OMG. So horrible the social damage caused by lost decade. I enjoyed watching and learned much. Thank you

[@peterip8001]

Simply put it, the USA and the Western allies waged a economic containment policy on Japan and it never recovered. With friends like that, who needs enemies?

[@kreek22]

In any other era, defeated by any other nation, Japan would simply have become a colony after its total surrender. America has been touchingly gentle with Japan--it hasn't even forced mass third world "immigration"...yet.

[@losersclub9942]

The difference we have here in United States , is we are the reserve currency . That could change soon

[@moo76man]

japanese yen is a reserve currency as well. please look it up

[@Skiddla]

wow this about a decade old, he said at the end you hope for things to get better soon then you wake up and realize its been a decade and this is the new reality. well, its been about a decade since 2008, this is the new reality, and i think we still have another crash coming.

[@scenemore]

shouldnt this be a movie already?

[@Mayeverycreaturefindhappiness]

Aww back when money made sense and was rooted in reality

[@68yoruichi]

It was a good presentation.

[@happyvikings]

does anyone know what the name of the unemployed business men hes talking about at 1:24:00 is?

[@GreensShadow]

Here because I’m thinking we are going through a deflationary period in the US, 2020

[@buyingmississippi6791]

its kicking off now I think

[@actualsnow345]

Bruh now it's crazy

[@vlada881]

Actually lost 25 years.

[@GXRming1998xsd]

interesting，now almost 3 decades LOL

[@zurinarctus1329]

Still continuing with Covid-19

[@Emissionary]

and China is demographically 20 to 30 years behind Japan, depending on what figures you are looking at and what projections you have. So China is headed towards its own "Lost Decade" of low to nil growth.

[@eriksantoso1741]

@@Emissionary maybe South Korea first and then china

[@neuralvibes]

​@@Emissionary No, China will not share Japan's fate. China has a much bigger population pool to source from, a much more tech-savvy work environment, a greater participation of women in the work force, and most importantly: China's projected demographic decline will coincide with mass-adoption of automation and AI.

[@heaven9036]

Plaza Accord of 1985

[@Patternlogic]

Very interesting lecture. Thank you.

[@mcsaucyman]

One of the biggest reasons the crisis was able to get that bad was because of group think. Japan has a collectivist culture as compared to Western culture which is more individualistic. This leads to bigger bubbles and bigger bust because it is frowned upon to think differently. It is ineffective to just decrease interest rates because the average person doesn't pay attention to it. To stimulate an economy with a collectivist culture you would have to change the attitude of a whole nation at once as compared to an individualistic culture in which an individual creates a ripple effect and that effect slowly changes everyone's attitude.

[@jimdickson919]

economists and financial analysts all herd together like sheep as well. Any credibly hired financial analyst that suggests the markets are about to tank will be excised like a heretic.

[@shonanscotto]

Well said. Groupism has it's flaws, that's for sure.

[@mdshaf87]

I had a complete different picture of Japanese efficiency before this speech!

[@andyy6481]

next time maybe film the slide show and have the mic closer to the speaker instead of filming the speaker.

[@ahmadalmotawaa8015]

Wow I learned a lot

[@willembecker2794]

After ww2, Japan and south Korea got financial help from the US, like western Europe which got the Marshal aid, only under an other name. That's why those countries got a kick start.

[@laysz]

Feels like Canada right now.

[@one.love.adventureclub]

so many people in toronto thinks the housing market is going to keep going up. But canada has nothing economically compared to japan in 80s. And people here think oh Canada has so much resources and land the housing market is going to be keep going up.

[@lolwutyoumad]

this, Japan has no real resources, no room to grow on an island that is mostly uninhabitable and almost no arable land

[@Mikko088]

Sounds like the US and eurozone combined here. Zero interest rates forever: eurozone checked, low in the US as well. (Especially Goldman) bankers playing on both sides politics and banking US checked. US is so different that it can do whatever it wants forever very much checked. Aging population eurozone checked. Also about the market taking care of the problems vs. government intervention as far as I know the market taking care of the problem here in the west would have ment a lot of banks going under, but did that really happen in Japan? As it sounded more like that many zombie banks still exist there.

[@Skiddla]

they should have let the market prevent having a problem in the first place. if you want the crazy ride up, you have to accept the crash that comes with it.

[@raskltube]

fascinating

[@feelthepony]

Why not him not anyone else is mentioning the plaza acords?

[@gogreengameon2146]

PlayStation VR came from Japan. 'Nuff said 🏆

[@dfjpr]

"On useless bridges and roads" ... how do they drive in Chicago ?

[@Travelingman-1980]

Australians thing they're different too. Property is religion in this country.

[@shonanscotto]

Well said, sir.

[@thomascooley2749]

Jet propulsion laboratory was selling for less than 2 million the same day tweeter sold for 44 billion Tech is vastly overvalued and has become our Tokyo garden

[@dexlee7277]

can you please higher the volume of the voice?

[@jimmy_octane]

Good presentation. *But* it glosses over the phenomenon of the Bank of Japan, which from all accounts is a central bank. Prof. Tsutsui conflates the free market with *state-centered commerce* such central banking and with *feudal institutions* such as Keiretsu conglomerates and life long employment. It seems to me that there was no real free market in Japan but, rather, the entire country was loosely arranged to operate as a single corporation that sold most of its products in free markets elsewhere, particularly in the U.S. Like a ponzi scheme, the real challenge to Japanese today is that it is no longer able to promise young ppl the same secure employment and lucrative retirement that could be promised to earlier generations because the debt on which such promises were belt has just about reached its limit.

[@peterbradshaw8018]

People need to look at Industrial Japan before WW I . More electrification than Germany etc One useful book is Mosk, C Japanese Economic Development: Markets, Norms. Structures [ISBN 9780415771580] The bibliography of that book is a storehouse of valuable information and analysis. Tried to complete the bibliography but had to give it a break because of my bookkeeping studies. Who said bookkeeping was easy.

[@burn_out]

35:04 seals be like

[@aoeu256]

Japan's lost decade was when their soft-power was at its biggest. Think of all of the anime & games that the West learned about in the 90s.

[@neuralvibes]

That began in the 80s.

[@dfjpr]

"Japan is known as one of the world's least innovative countries" ... ? He said, what ?

[@Eimmas520]

Sounds a lot like China’s situation in the present day.

[@ramraghuwanshi2562]

@Francis but then china has huge population means much more to feed..

[@richardyoung6696]

@@ramraghuwanshi2562 well China is aging, but China has not a large bubble due to its massive real estate investment and e-commerce, the population generates large momentum, and the government type is different. China is also tackling this problem by BRI.

[@ramraghuwanshi2562]

@@richardyoung6696 momentum doesn't matter even japan had huge momentum in 1990 they also tried there "bri" called JICA etc.. Fact is china is overinvesting in infrastructure which is creating gdp growth.. But this investment is fuelled by debt.. Which it will find tough to repay.. Just as japan

[@Fire-ci4se]

Sounds more true today

[@kreek22]

Like China, Japan has been a one party state for many decades. Even after the financial collapse the LDP did not lose power for more than a couple of years. This is one reason why Japan did not reform its economy more effectively...also why China's attempts to reform its economy has so far been mostly talk.

[@tomjohn8733]

Sounds familiar…..

[@nandadulalbakshi3121]

Price down reverse act

[@Midironica]

A big mistake of Japan in the 1980's was forgetting that it was a manufacturing economy, and had no natural resources. It was uncharacteristically arrogant of the 1980's Japanese to think that a nation of 100 million with no natural resources could surpass places like the US or China with 350+ million citizens and a wealth of oil, metals, natural gas, land, etc.

[@AbcdEfgh-sq2tf]

Is that why the trade war suceeded with Japan but kinda failed with China?

[@AbcdEfgh-sq2tf]

@Francis especially with the orange man in the helm, this decoupling may be faster than we all think. He has the now authority to literally pull out all US companies from China and bring them back to the US with a tweet.

[@AbcdEfgh-sq2tf]

@Francis True that, but he could still force his way through like his insistance on building the wall 😬. For example, he had instructed GM to not produce ventilators for China, instead have it shipped for US usage and also instructed a few other American companies to reopened manufacturing plants in the US. If he could do those, I do not see why he could not do the same for the rest.

[@AbcdEfgh-sq2tf]

@Francis I know, which is why despite all those foreign manufacturers pulling out of China, they would still be able to recover, it would just take longer.

[@moo76man]

what an arrogant comment missing the important point of Japanese experience that the all the advanced economies are suffering today!!!

[@truthtv999]

Sounds similar to usa

[@fern8580]

Of course, demographic stagnation has something to do with it, but you minimize Asian mimicry (Korea, Taiwan, China) which has systematically copied Japanese methods and products, making Japanese commercial progress impossible.

[@skipsassy1]

Cancer cells don't give lectures to other cancer cells - bubbles are human hard wired.

[@sydurgraham7760]

Wut

[@KACZMARCZYK4369]

gr8

[@aJarrowLad525]

Can't hear what he is saying volume clarity terrible turned off

[@englishgrammar3298]

Actually, that fear about the Japanese taking over was well founded. By 1992, the economy of Japan was 71% the size of the American economy. In comparison, today China's economy is only 64% the size of America's economy. So, what went wrong with Japan? Answer - They stopped having children, the Japanese started getting older and so they became progressively less competitive with America. Come 2019, and now Japan's economy is just 24% the size of the American economy. And, exactly the same thing could very well happen with China, because it already has a lower fertility/birth rate than America and so they are now aging quickly too. China's and Japan's economic models were superior to America's but once they get old and decrepit that doesn't count for much. This is not just my opinion. For example, Yi Fuxian in his opinion piece titled, "An aging China will never overtake the US economy," is arguing almost the same thing. The link - www.inkstonenews.com/opinion/yi-fuxian-china-will-never-catch-us-economy-thanks-population-aging/article/3003790

[@TheMolabola]

The US takes in bunch of people while Japan's population is declining, they could have prevented it by taking in immigrants but they didn't.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

Exactly. If you compensate for population japan really hasn't done that poorly compared to other developed nations the last 20 years. This is basicly what will happen to the entire world pretty soon. Most developed nations have a population problem. Now it is fixed with immigration, but the world population is set to peak in 2050. And the poorer world is very rapidly developing at the moment also putting a massive brake on the amount of people wanting to immigrate already. Our economic syatems are simply not suited for populations that do not grow. It all falls apart if the younger population isn't bigger then the older generation.

[@rui-9-cs315]

💕

[@Michael-sl5qx]

Their mistake was shifting from funding their companies through banks (loans) to funding from paper securities (stocks, bonds, etc). Seems to be a recurring theme across the world tbh

[@CoreyChambersLA]

Copy Japan's cleanliness and low crime rate. Don't copy Japan's big government, zero interest rate stagnation.

[@Wolvenfire86]

This is cool but man, the sound is awful.

[@CoreyChambersLA]

Lost 3 decades.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

He didn't mention the declining population once. If you correct for population japan really hasn't done to bad compared to other oecd nations the last 20 years. For the rest he seems to only be able to rely on decades old tropes, "conventional wisdoms" and anecdodes. In the end what happened in japan, especially after the millenium, is going to happen everywhere. Our economic system is just not suited for a slowly shrinking population.

[@spiritgoldmember7528]

Lol and people think the US is better off?

[@trevorkobilo2480]

Excessive pomposity by the presenter - quite typical of Western scholars.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

That is what i was thinking.

[@sambking]

No conclusions. Few sources given for his statements. Poor at best.

[@StylishCashew31]

I think the presentation was for people who had little to no knowledge on Japan's economic past. I learned a lot during his presentation. I could see it being a poor presentation to someone that has previous knowledge on Japan.

[@baronvonlimbourgh1716]

A lot of inacuracies and a lot of controversial conclusions.