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Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

nytimes.com

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Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#121

Post by yuiyui »

vetinari wrote: post #70
hackerboos wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The key phrase here was 'aging population'. If the majority of Japan's population are retired then there will still be a huge deficit. Japan needs to bite the bullet and accept immigration as part of its economic strategy.

Immigration will not solve the problem of aging population. In a generation or two, the immigrants would face exactly the same problem. Because with immigration, you didn't solve the underlying cause of why people don't have kids. You just muddled the observable status for a while.

> you didn't solve the underlying cause of why people don't have kids.

Exactly. And the cause is the mutually reinforced effect of capitalist consumerism and feminism.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#122

Post by [deleted] »

phkahler wrote: post #111
HSO wrote: post #86

Those who think Japan is unique in its condition and/or that the answer to its problems is more of the same old "advice" as proffered by standard issue economists and business types might profit from Robert Gordon's recently published "American Growth". (paper version: http://www.nber.org/papers/w18315.pdf ) At least, it can offer a different, longer-term perspective on the issues. It's not impossible that we will lo…

>> It's not impossible that we will look back in 20 years and see Japan not as some sort of failure but simply as the first society that had to learn to live without growth. They still haven't learned, they're trying really really hard to force growth. Negative interest rates can be seen as a tax on inactivity, and while it's been talked about in the US, I think it comes too close to taxing assets for the rich to emb…

[deleted]

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#123

Post by yuiyui »

oblio wrote: post #116
VLM wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is a Japan without any Japanese people still Japan? Culturally would modern Japanese tolerate a cultural mass suicide or did that go out of style at the end of WW2? USA has been talked into it, but would that work on modern Japanese? Meanwhile there's a weird undercurrent of racism, if we just take Japan 2016 and person for person swap out for obviously superior foreigners (imperialism?) then magically everything is…

Mmmm... the Japanese have problems even reintegrating Japanese Brazilians, i.e. Japanese who have moved to Brazil. That reeks more of Japanese xenophobia than of some "Western imperialist racist conspiracy" to destabilize Japan.

> Mmmm... the Japanese have problems even reintegrating Japanese Brazilians,

That's no problem of the Japanese, but of the immigrants. They're the newcomers, they're the ones who should be putting all the effort to assimilate into the host culture.

And it isn't happening, not even with descendants of Japanese. Imagine what would happen with a radically different culture (no need to imagine, just look at Europe).

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#124

Post by patrickmcmanus »

jessaustin wrote: post #91
stephenboyd wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like most countries, Japan's government runs a deficit and depends on selling bonds for funding.

How does that work with a negative rate? Somewhat equivalently, how does that work with any rate whatsoever?

it means they can sell the bonds for less (i.e. pay less interest) because one source of competition, depositing the money rather than buying the bond, is less attractive for the captial. As with all credit - that's a great dynamic if you're using the funds for capital infrastructure to strengthen your overall situation, but kinda questionable if you're using it for living expenses.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#125

Post by yuiyui »

woodpanel wrote: post #67

Maybe OT: Isn't this just proof that Japan needs to let go of it's biggest barrier to growth? By which I mean it's non-existing immigration? I've been recently to Japan and despite my fears Tokio was a really affordable place (leaving out the hotel prices of course). I thought this was due to the lack of growth and the recent quantitative easing and other government measures. Measurements that seem to be failing at t…

> By which I mean it's non-existing immigration?

That's not a bug, it's a feature. Japan enjoys the advantages of having a civilized, educated, homogeneous, high trust society, and they're not willing to abandon that in exchange of what, low skilled workers they don't need and ethnic conflict?

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#126

Post by tosseraccount »

jessriedel wrote: post #118
jernfrost wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the growth problems of Japan is largely an illusion and myth caused by population decline. Growth per capita in Japan has been completely normal in the supposed terrible years. It is the population decline which causes the overall GDP growth to look anemic. Naturally it is growth per capita which matters as this is what improves the living conditions of people. There are many countries with high GDP growth but wh…

What time period are you talking about? In 1991, per capita GDP in US and Japan were both ~$32k in 2005 USD. But now it's ~$38k for Japan and $47k for US. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-per-capita http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp-per-capita

"A look at the underlying accounting, however, suggests that, far from underperforming, Japan may have outperformed. For a start, in a little noticed change, United States statisticians in the 1980s embarked on an increasingly aggressive use of the so-called hedonic method of adjusting for inflation, an approach that in the view of many experts artificially boosts a nation’s apparent growth rate.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/the-true-st...

Japan was the "bad guy" in 1990, they had a lot incentive to downplay their position in subsequent years.

[ dang, is that you? chill, dude ]

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#128

Post by sitkack »

jessriedel wrote: post #118
jernfrost wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the growth problems of Japan is largely an illusion and myth caused by population decline. Growth per capita in Japan has been completely normal in the supposed terrible years. It is the population decline which causes the overall GDP growth to look anemic. Naturally it is growth per capita which matters as this is what improves the living conditions of people. There are many countries with high GDP growth but wh…

What time period are you talking about? In 1991, per capita GDP in US and Japan were both ~$32k in 2005 USD. But now it's ~$38k for Japan and $47k for US. http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/gdp-per-capita http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/gdp-per-capita

Per capita statistics encourage a false assumption of sharing. It isn't measuring what most people think it is.

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#129

Post by jevgeni »

ifdefdebug wrote: post #37
jevgeni wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On FT or Bloomberg, yeah. HN has more important things to do, like arguing if one can call a variable "iGiveHead" in a FOSS project[1]... ____ [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11018019

You just had to find a way to pull the gender issue into a thread that has nothing to do with it right? Completely off topic, sorry.

No. To be clear: I used sarcasm[1] to highlight the in my opinion ridiculous preferences of HN readership.

___

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarcasm

Re: Bank of Japan, in a Surprise, Adopts Negative Interest Rate

#130

Post by SolaceQuantum »

yuiyui wrote: post #121
vetinari wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Immigration will not solve the problem of aging population. In a generation or two, the immigrants would face exactly the same problem. Because with immigration, you didn't solve the underlying cause of why people don't have kids. You just muddled the observable status for a while.

> you didn't solve the underlying cause of why people don't have kids. Exactly. And the cause is the mutually reinforced effect of capitalist consumerism and feminism.

I don't see how capitalism or feminism is the cause of Japan's low birth rate. Could you explain?
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