Meanwhile, Japan, one of our biggest creditors, is starting to go over the cliff.
Jan. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Japan’s credit rating was cut for the first time in nine years by Standard & Poor’s as persistent deflation and political gridlock undermine efforts to reduce a 943 trillion yen ($11 trillion) debt burden.Coherent strategy?!? What kiond of coherent strategy can you have when you're debt load is 200% of your GDP and you've grown accustomed to massive deficit spending? They're doomed. Before they go down, they're going to sell about $900B of US Treasuries.
The world’s most indebted nation is now ranked at AA-, the fourth-highest level, putting the country on a par with China, which likely passed Japan last year to become the second-largest economy. The government lacks a “coherent strategy” to address the nation’s debt, the rating company said in a statement. The outlook for the rating is stable, S&P said.
So forget about high speed rail and green energy and higher education and all the rest. It's time to grow up.
7 comments:
They're not reproducing.
Sort of like here, but add in a bias against marrying women who are over 25, a habit of guys who want to get married before that being traditional in all the wrong ways, and-- well, there's a reason that the homely and/or jerk sailors and Marines tend to get married in Japan, and it always seems to be to a drop-dead lovely lady. Compared to how she's been treated before, they at least treat her like she's alive, not an, ahem, marital aid.
I don't know what the numbers are overall, but I know our ship had at least a half-dozen guys who married a Japanese national and stayed. They're having children a lot faster than the pure Japanese folks. (One couple had a son, and are getting huge payments from the government for it-- apparently the male birthrate is incredibly low, because girls take care of the parents. *shudder*, when you think about what that indicates.)
Will the high speed rail stations be served by local or community monorail lines? I don't want to have to walk more than a block to the monorail station, but it better not block my view or make noise.
Getting property rights for all these train lines is going to take years, and will either be incredibly expensive or lead to a tyranny that makes Kelo look tame.
Almost guaranteed they'll just slam down a "right of way" and take the land.
Despite billions of dollars spent on high speed rail as a part of the Stimuloid Porkgasm™, I don't think a single mile of track was laid. I don't think we have to worry about land siezures. The government has regulated itself into total inaction.
What happened to all the seminars on Japanese Management?
Hah... every try to get across the Tokyo/Yokohama area by train? The trains themselves are wonderful, but figuring out the payment system is hellish.
If Tokyo is typical of the fruits of Japanese management, then that's the last thing we want. The place has 37,000,000 people and it feels like every one of them is right next to you.
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