How sick is the Japanese economy?
I think Japan is in serious trouble, and it will take them awhile to get out of it. I don’t think they can really get out of the swamp without struggling with deregulation and a restructuring of the economy. I don’t mean just Big Bang stuff, but getting government out of all businesses and really breaking up the cartels and quasi-cartels. That will require significant political changes and cause significant pain to vested interests. What baffles me a little bit is the debt. It is a time bomb, but the crazy thing is that the Japanese could take care of it, but aren’t doing anything. It wouldn’t surprise me to see the Japanese belabored over this for some time. Q: Will Japan’s problems hurt the rest of the world? A: It’s very difficult for the rest of Asia to recover in a healthy fashion without Japan getting on track. It really is retarding the recovery of the rest of Asia. If some of these time bombs [in Japan] explode, one can imagine it will have a big impact on the U.S. market. [Som
