Which economy is the one REALLY in trouble, Japan or USA?
Gary Clark
reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
is a bunch of nonsense.
He claims that the Japanese currently (must) have about US$26 TRILLION
in their Postal Savings accounts, or about one million dollars (on
average) per family.
His analysis is presented below.
Not being an economist myself, I am posting this here hoping for some
intelligent and meaningful comments from people who are either:
1. Economics scholars themselves
or
2. Engaged in business in Japan and seeing first hand what is going on
Thank you for your comments and input
Gary Clark
My friend's analysis is below:
* * * *
THE JAPANESE ECONOMY
* Japanese families save 24% of their incomes each year.
* The Japanese "Postal Savings Account" now exceeds $22 Trillion.
* Of the World's Top 52 Commercial Banks, 17 are Japanese, with assets
of $5.6 Trillion.
BUT--the world's media continue to report that the Japanese economy is
on the verge of collapse. How can this be?
In the article "The Social Contradictions of Japanese Capitalism"
(http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/98jun/japancap.htm)
author Murray Sayle states that the Japanese postal savings system now
holds, with insurance and pensions, the yen equivalent of $3 trillion.
But the report "Japan Statistical Yearbook, 1998", shows on page 462
that the Japanese, in just the year 1996, deposited more than 213
trillion yen (or $1.3 Trillion) in the "postal savings account." The
Japanese have been saving an average 24% of their incomes since the
early 1960s. Japanese Real GDP was $5.9 Trillion in 1997, which means
(using the 25% figure) they saved $1,416 Billion in that one year alone.
Integrated over the last 37 years, and assuming that they started at
zero in 1961 -- which considerably reduces this guess -- the Japanese
have saved more than $26.2 Trillion in the last 4 decades.
Edward W. Desmond erroneously reports that Japan's total personal
savings are a mere $13 Trillion (see
http://www.pathfinder.com/fortune/1997/970721/jpn.html). Testimony of
Martin A. Armstrong before US Congressional House Way & Means Committee
also under-reports Japan's total Personal Savings at $10 Trillion (see
www.theeurobank.com/About/TESTMONY.HTM). The United Nations "Statistical
Summary" more accurately reports the balance in their Postal Savings
Account to be $22 Trillion.
To confirm that the Japanese still save 24% of their incomes, see
http://www.nri.co.jp/nri/publications/nriqF/96winter/chap02.html
Which of these estimates are 100% correct? The Japanese won't tell us,
because they don't have the same reporting requirements that we have.
But for Murray Sayle to suggest that Japan's "postal savings ... system
now holds, with insurance and pensions, the yen equivalent of $3
trillion" is socially and morally and intellectually reprehensible.
His statement:
"The Finance Ministry has confessed that Japanese banks hold bad
loans worth a confidence-crushing 76.7 trillion yen ($614
billion), proportionally ten times as much as America's
savings-and-loan failures cost"
is correct, but intentionally misleading. Consider what a puny amount
this is in contrast to the amount of money in the Postal Savings
Accounts. The article misleadingly fails to note that a bank loss of
about 2% of their Postal Savings Accounts wouldn't even make a Samurai
lose sleep.
The real sign of idiocy in this article is the following statement:
"'If the Nikkei [the Tokyo stock index] drops below twelve
thousand, the world economy goes bust.' I checked the papers: the
Nikkei, which touched 38,915 on December 29, 1989, was yo-yoing
between 14,000 and 15,000. (It is since up.) New York in 1929
felt edgy and nervous, old-timers say, just as Japan does in the
spring of 1998."
First, the math skills of the Japanese are obviously far superior to
Murray Sayle's. The Japanese average score on the TIMSS test is 605, vs
the US score of 500, which is a clue as to why the Nikkei average is
irrelevant. The Japanese UNDERSTAND the futility of stock investing, so
they don't do it. "Japan Statistical Yearbook 1998" shows that their
TOTAL "investment" in stocks to be 9 Trillion yen--a whopping $64
Billion--less than 0.3% of their Postal Savings Account.
This point must be put in clearer language! The Japanese Nikkei
could DISAPPEAR from the face of the earth, and the average
Japanese family with the average Japanese portfolio of $1 Million
would lose a whopping $2,909 dollars.
That might be a lot to the average American family with a paltry $4,000
in Personal Savings (and $90,000 in Public Debt and $18,750 in Consumer
Debt), but it is pocket change to that Japanese family.
Why don't writers like Murray do the most basic sanity check on their
writings and ramblings? Why are they able to get away with such
egregious writing?
|---------------------------------------------------------|
|Asian | | Top 52 | Consumer & | |
|Economic | Personal | Commercial | Home Loan | Public |
|Crisis?! | Savings | Banks | Debts | Debt |
|---------|----------|------------|------------|----------|
|Japan | $23,000 | $5,600 | $178 | $1.7 |
| | Billion | Billion | Billion | Trillion |
|---------|----------|------------|------------|----------|
|US | $203 | $709 | $4,900 | $5.5 |
| | Billion | Billion | Billion | Trillion |
|---------|----------|------------|------------|----------|
|Japan:US | 113X | 7.9X | 0.036X | 0.31X |
|---------------------------------------------------------|
If 100% of our Personal Savings of $203.1 Billion per year were used to
pay off those debts, it would take us 6 years to pay off the $1.2
Trillion Consumer Credit, 18 years to pay off the $3.7 Trillion in Home
Loans, and 30 years to pay off the $6 Trillion Public Debt--or 54 years.
[Standard & Poor's "Current Statistics", July 1995, Vol. 61 #7]
Japan's Public Debt, on the other hand, is less than 8% of its Personal
Savings ($1.7 Trillion). Japan could pay off its Public Debt and have
$20 Trillion left over in Personal Savings. The Japan Statistical
Yearbook 1998 shows that Japan's total Consumer Credit including home
mortgages is only $178 Billion, giving the United States more than 27
times as much consumer debt as Japan. Japan could use its Postal Savings
Account alone to pay off all of its debt in ONE year, AND pay off all of
the U.S. debts, and still have about $10 Trillion left over.
Americans are the ones having a financial crisis, while the Japanese are
laughing all the way to the bank.
In 1973, the U.S. had four commercial banks with assets which were
larger than any other bank in the world, with twice as many assets as
the largest Japanese bank (B of A with $47 Billion vs. Dai-Ichi with $22
Billion). In 1996, Japan had 8 commercial banks which were more than
twice the size of our largest commercial bank (Bank of Tokyo with $648
Billion vs. Chase Manhattan with $272 Billion).
Of the top 52 commercial banks worldwide (The World Almanac, 1998, pg.
115), 17 are Japanese with assets of $5.6 Trillion, and three are US
with assets of $709 Billion (one eighth the assets of the top Japanese
commercial banks).
Even though Japan has more than eight times as many assets in commercial
banks than the US, the amount they have in commercial banks is ALMOST
irrelevant compared to the amount in their Postal Savings Accounts.
THE FACTS:
1) The US has never had a higher Public Debt, a higher Consumer Debt,
nor a lower level of personal savings than it now has.
2) The real purchasing power of today's U.S. incomes are literally one
third of what they were in 1973.
3) The U.S. hasn't had an after-inflation GDP growth rate in the last 30
years which comes even close to the average after-inflation growth rate
of Japan for 48 of the last 50 years.
Aaron M. Renn
>I have a friend who claims that all the doom and gloom currently being
>reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
>is a bunch of nonsense.
It's one thing to have lots of money in the bank. It's another to spend it.
The problem with the Japanese economy is that no one is spending any of
their money, they are hording it in the bank as you mentioned. Hence many
people have described the situation in Japan today as a Keynesian liquidity
trap.
Japanses banks might have lots of assets, but they also have huge
liabilities. They took in deposits (liabilities) and lent them out as
highly speculative loans (assets) with grossly over inflated land values as
collateral. When the price of land collapsed and these loans went sour, the
asset values - while still extremely large in the aggregate - plunged to
nearly the level of liabilities, leading many banks to the brink of
insolvency.
--
Aaron M. Renn (ar...@urbanophile.com) http://www.urbanophile.com/arenn/
Gary Clark
> >reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
> >is a bunch of nonsense.
>
> The problem with the Japanese economy is that no one is spending any of
> their money, they are hording it in the bank as you mentioned. Hence many
> people have described the situation in Japan today as a Keynesian liquidity
> trap.
>
> Japanses banks might have lots of assets, but they also have huge
> liabilities. They took in deposits (liabilities) and lent them out as
> highly speculative loans (assets) with grossly over inflated land values as
> collateral. When the price of land collapsed and these loans went sour, the
> asset values - while still extremely large in the aggregate - plunged to
> nearly the level of liabilities, leading many banks to the brink of
> insolvency.
That sounds like a good explanation, and maybe it is. However, my friend
claims that the solvency or insolvency of the Japanese banks is
irrelevent, since the astronomical amounts on deposit are in the postal
savings accounts, not the banks. He also claims that the existence of
these huge deposits provide an underlying strength and stabilizing
influence for the Japanese economy that is totaly lacking in the U.S.
His thesis is that it doesn't matter how bad business may get in Japan,
the typical Japanese family has so much saved they can ride out almost
anything.
Gary Clark
David Ladley
<36225941...@words-that-work.org>...
> I have a friend who claims that all the doom and gloom currently being
> reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
> is a bunch of nonsense.
I agree, and I'm glad to see someone who can see through all the B.S. The
Japanese are sitting on mountains of cash. The only "crisis" is that the
mountains of cash have stopped growing!
I heard an analyst estimate in the early 90s that if Japanese were to cut
off all sources of national revenue permanently, they'd still have enough
capital to maintain their current standard of living for 2 or 3 more
generations. I'd believe that.
Dave Ladley
Thomas Henneke
Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 couldn´t resist:
>It's one thing to have lots of money in the bank. It's another to spend it.
>The problem with the Japanese economy is that no one is spending any of
>their money, they are hording it in the bank as you mentioned.
You have overseen one important point:
the demographic situation.
If you take a look at the atlas then you come to the conclusion that
the population of Japan is *old*. This problem will last for many
years, perhaps 30 years. Retirements, culture, ...
I am very pessimistic on the NIKKEY index and I consider shorting for
a long time. Don´t get me wrong! It is not an offense against
Japanese.
--
Noch benutze ich Fenster95 von WinzigWeich
Robato Yao
>Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote in article
><36225941...@words-that-work.org>...
>> reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
>> is a bunch of nonsense.
>
>Japanese are sitting on mountains of cash. The only "crisis" is that the
>mountains of cash have stopped growing!
>
>I heard an analyst estimate in the early 90s that if Japanese were to cut
>off all sources of national revenue permanently, they'd still have enough
>capital to maintain their current standard of living for 2 or 3 more
>generations. I'd believe that.
>
>Dave Ladley
Is that enough to cover about $600 billion dollars worth of bad loans in
Japanese banks?
Rgds,
Chris
(counting down from top 50 oxymorons...)
10. Tight slacks
9. Definite maybe
8. Pretty ugly
7. Twelve-ounce pound cake
6. Diet ice cream
5. Rap music
4. Working vacation
3. Exact estimate
2. Religious tolerance
And the NUMBER ONE top oxy-MORON
1. Microsoft Works
---From the Top 50 Oxymorons (thanks to Richard Kennedy)
Robato Yao
>Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote in article
><36225941...@words-that-work.org>...
>> reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
>> is a bunch of nonsense.
>
>Japanese are sitting on mountains of cash. The only "crisis" is that the
>mountains of cash have stopped growing!
The Japanese are not sitting on mountains of cash, at least according to
the ones I talk to. I do considerable business with Japan, and since
these are mostly businessmen I talk to, and more likely to be in a
position to be millionaires.
The economy is not as bad as Western media put it, but it is not growing
nor does it paint a happy picture. Neither is their living standard
declining by any means.
>
>I heard an analyst estimate in the early 90s that if Japanese were to cut
>off all sources of national revenue permanently, they'd still have enough
>capital to maintain their current standard of living for 2 or 3 more
>generations. I'd believe that.
>
>Dave Ladley
Unfortunately that is not how many Japanese feel. During the last few
years, they have curtailed their spending a lot. I know businesses that
sell luxury goods to Japanese tourists, and these businesses all report
successive declines in purchases. So are many overseas investments,
although it may be that investments are either being shifted away from
the United States into China or being used to cover losses at home.
I learned to be skeptical about figures from Japan. Somehow because of
real estate prices, values take on a warped dimension---Tokyo downtown
real estate may cost more than the entire land value of the United
States. Banks have been known to hide the real value of their bad
loans. As for savings accounts, deposits does not mean availability of
cash. A deposit practically means that you "lent" your money to a bank
or institution, which in turn, invests it somewhere else. It has to
invest the money somewhere in order just to cover the interest. Even
postal savings accounts. How do you know if these are invested non
soluble assets like real estate? If you invested in overpriced real
estate, it's not technically a "bad loan" yet. It's just not
convertible to cash quickly. Actually, unless you have a buyer, it's
not convertible to cash at all. So long you can pay your principals and
interest, it's not a bad loan until you can't maintain your principal
and interest payments.
If all of Japan would try to withdraw that $26 trillion out of those
savings accounts, the actual cash reserves will not cover it by far.
This is true of any bank or institution.
Grinch
>I have a friend who claims that all the doom and gloom currently being
>reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
>is a bunch of nonsense.
>
>He claims that the Japanese currently (must) have about US$26 TRILLION
>in their Postal Savings accounts, or about one million dollars (on
>average) per family.
They "must" have, eh?
Some sort of "common sense alarm" ought to go off on hearing a claim
like this. If everybody in Japan is a millionaire that really would
be something to talk about. But then why are so many Japanese slaving
away in salarymen's jobs?
You don't have to be an economist to refute an absurd number like
this. Use common sense. Pick up an almanac and look at the real
savings numbers for different countries. If you start adding up the
numbers for the major countries you'll soon see that total *world*
savings is a little more than $30 trillion.
Your friend deduces that $26 trillion of this is in Japanese postal
savings. Then the Japanese also have savings in pensions, life
insurance, the stock market, and cookie jars. So Japanese savings
alone exceed total world savings by several trillion?
>His analysis is presented below.
I wouldn't exactly call it "analysis" when he doesn't seem to have
read his own sources. For instance, your friend says...
>To confirm that the Japanese still save 24% of their incomes, see
>http://www.nri.co.jp/nri/publications/nriqF/96winter/chap02.html
And following that link, we read:
"As of 1994, the savings rate had already dropped to 12.8 percent..."
Not very convincing, that. Less than rigorous as analysis goes.
>Not being an economist myself, I am posting this here hoping for some
>intelligent and meaningful comments from people who are either:
>
>1. Economics scholars themselves
>or
>2. Engaged in business in Japan and seeing first hand what is going on
>
>Thank you for your comments and input
>
>Gary Clark
>
>My friend's analysis is below:
Your friends "analysis" is most notable as a Rube Goldberg-like
construction of false deductions built on mistakes of fact.
If one wants real information on this subject, one need not go through
all this misspent effort. Just look up the numbers at a source like
the OECD, http://www.oecd.org , or the Japanese Statistics Bureau,
whose 'Japan in Figures' web page is at
http://www.stat.go.jp/1611m.htm
The yen-dollar exchange rate has moved around a lot, but using the
current rate, for the record, Japanese personal savings are a little
over $10 trillion. That's a lot, about a third of the world total, but
nowhere near what your friend deduces.
Of this $10 trillion, deposits of *all* kinds, including postal
savings, total about $6 trillion. Life insurance accounts for about
$2.5 trillion. About $0.5 trillion are in stocks. You can look up the
exact numbers for it all yourself if you wish.
In 1996 the average Japanese household had savings of $109,400 and
liabilities of $41,300, for a net of $68,100. Very good indeed by
American standards -- but nothing like the $1 million your friend
deduces.
Note that the above figures are set at the exhange-rate value, *not*
at what they would actually buy.
The purchasing power parity value of the yen currently is only
64% of its exchange rate value, according to the OECD. That means the
$10 trillion of savings that the Japanese have are worth only $6.4
trillion in terms of what a dollar buys in the U.S. And the
purchasing value of the average Japanese household's net $68,100 in
savings is $43,500.
So much for your friend's thesis.
I'll just add a few comments below, between snips.
>* * * *
>
>THE JAPANESE ECONOMY
>
>* Japanese families save 24% of their incomes each year.
>* The Japanese "Postal Savings Account" now exceeds $22 Trillion.
>* Of the World's Top 52 Commercial Banks, 17 are Japanese, with assets
> of $5.6 Trillion.
And what number does your friend give for the *liabilities* of these
banks?
<snip>
>The Japanese have been saving an average 24% of their incomes since the
>early 1960s.
Again, your friend's own source gives the Japanese savings rate as
12.8%.
>Japanese Real GDP was $5.9 Trillion in 1997,
$4.2 trillion, from the OECD, the keeper of such stats.
>which means
>(using the 25% figure) they saved $1,416 Billion in that one year alone.
Among many other things, your friend doesn't know that GDP does not
equal personal income, so you don't figure personal savings by
multiplying GDP by the personal savings rate.
>Integrated over the last 37 years, and assuming that they started at
>zero in 1961 -- which considerably reduces this guess -- the Japanese
>have saved more than $26.2 Trillion in the last 4 decades.
This is getting humorous.
For fun, let's try this. The Japanese savings rate is 12%-13%. Here
are some actual savings rates for other nations: Portugal 17%, Turkey
16%, Korea 24%, Luxembourg 24%, Netherlands 14%, Norway 14%, etc.
Assume they all started saving at this rate in 1961. Which one of
them is going to own the world first?
<snip>
>To confirm that the Japanese still save 24% of their incomes, see
>http://www.nri.co.jp/nri/publications/nriqF/96winter/chap02.html
Tell your friend to read the link he provided.
<snip>
>... for Murray Sayle to suggest that Japan's "postal savings ... system
>now holds, with insurance and pensions, the yen equivalent of $3
>trillion" is socially and morally and intellectually reprehensible.
Actually, this looks like the one correct number your friend gives:
The Japanese have about $2 trillion in postal savings and $1 trillion
in postal insurance contracts.
<snip>
>The real sign of idiocy in this article is the following statement:
>
> "'If the Nikkei [the Tokyo stock index] drops below twelve
> thousand, the world economy goes bust.' I checked the papers: the
> Nikkei, which touched 38,915 on December 29, 1989, was yo-yoing
> between 14,000 and 15,000. (It is since up.) New York in 1929
> felt edgy and nervous, old-timers say, just as Japan does in the
> spring of 1998."
>
>First, the math skills of the Japanese are obviously far superior to
>Murray Sayle's.
Um, if I were your friend I wouldn't criticize anybody else's math
skills.
<some mathematical nonsense snipped>
> This point must be put in clearer language! The Japanese Nikkei
> could DISAPPEAR from the face of the earth, and the average
> Japanese family with the average Japanese portfolio of $1 Million
> would lose a whopping $2,909 dollars.
Aside from what you know now about Japanese household wealth, your
friend here is missing the very basic point that Japanese banks,
unlike US banks, include stock investments in their capital base.
That's the point of the magic 14,000 Nikkei number on Tokyo
stock exchange. Under 14,000 Japanese bank capital starts
disappearing -- reportedly they have to call in $100 billion in loans
for every 1,000 point drop.
Perhaps you've heard of the "money multiplier" -- how calling in
one loan can result in many other loans being called in, as in the
early 1930s.
Your friend starts by noting that the Japanese have 17 of the
world's largest banks -- by assets, not "health" or net value.
Imagine them all imploding at once as their capital disappears.
>Why don't writers ... do the most basic sanity check on their
>writings and ramblings? Why are they able to get away with such
>egregious writing?
Now that's a *good* question!
<merciful snip of the rest>
Nona Myers
(Grinch) wrote:
Thank you very much for this interesting thread. Your statements
below answered questions I had about why 14,000 was a magic
number for Nikkei.
>
>Aside from what you know now about Japanese household wealth, your
>friend here is missing the very basic point that Japanese banks,
>unlike US banks, include stock investments in their capital base.
> That's the point of the magic 14,000 Nikkei number on Tokyo
>stock exchange. Under 14,000 Japanese bank capital starts
>disappearing -- reportedly they have to call in $100 billion in loans
>for every 1,000 point drop.
> Perhaps you've heard of the "money multiplier" -- how calling in
>one loan can result in many other loans being called in, as in the
>early 1930s.
> Your friend starts by noting that the Japanese have 17 of the
>world's largest banks -- by assets, not "health" or net value.
>Imagine them all imploding at once as their capital disappears.
>
Perhaps you can answer a question I have that's been puzzling to
me for a while. When personal savings rate is quoted, does this
include 401K, thrift investment program for US Federal employees,
and other similar retirement-incentive type of savings and
investments?
Also, in your figures for individual net assets , does this
include real estate as well?
TIA
--
Nona Myers
(another hapa and foodie)
To learn about hapa: http://www.hapaissuesforum.org/
Patrick O'Connolly
Is that enough to cover about $600 billion dollars worth of bad loans in
Japanese banks?
Rgds,
***
Is it the job of the Japanese people to throw away there savings to the
banks who speculated, perhaps in the US the people are foolish enough to
bail-out the risk taking bankers, but maybe the Japanese people aren't so
stupid ???
sincerely,
Patrick O'Connolly
Japanese people aren't practicing insane consumption simply means that its
going to take time, but then again in the past the Japanese economy was
insane, perhaps we have a generational change where people are questioning
...
1.) ten dollar cups of coffee
2.) one hundred dollar sushi dinners
The past five years in Japan was a lot like 1920's Americana, the party in
Japan is over, we know have a depression generation that is holding there
cash, and of course that lack of spending is pissing off the world
consumption system. However I think that the this is the better approach
from a economic security point of view,
On the other hand take the US massive credit spending, insane use of credit
cards, most folks have negative net worth, how long can this last???
Look last week the dollar went down 20% relative to the yen, and we had to
raise interest rates to keep the world buying our t-bonds.
Finally I spent three months last fall in Asia, and even in South Korea,
things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is that the
US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse off than
we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class nation,
SIncerely,
Robato Yao
>Asia has had its fall the US has not yet seen the fall, the fact that the
>Japanese people aren't practicing insane consumption simply means that its
>going to take time, but then again in the past the Japanese economy was
>insane, perhaps we have a generational change where people are questioning
>
>1.) ten dollar cups of coffee
How about US$22 movie tickets?
>2.) one hundred dollar sushi dinners
How many people? Usually if I have about three people of moderate
appetite, I can get $60. Do a lot of exotic fishfood into the sushi and
it can easily go up to $70 a person. In Japan though, in the
opposite end of the scale, there are places you can get sushi real
cheap, which I don't see for sushi bars outside of the country. $2.50
for 3 pcs cut from a roll like tekkamaki is reasonable.
If you go to Robert De Niro's sushi bar named Nobu in New York, some of
the sushi there goes like $80 a pop. That's only for three
pieces. (The chef, and De Niro's partner in the venture, has a first
name of Nobuhiro.)
Then of course, at the height of decadence, there is also the infamous
gold filling sushi (sushi sprinkled with gold powder). Much more
appetizing is sushi served right on top of a naked woman.
The Japanese are not the only culprits though. At the height of the
Asian boom, I heard of Chinese serving US$5000 or $10,000 pan-to (per
dinner table) serving various exotic unnamables or endangered species.
In Hong Kong or Taiwan, they have luscious Chinese New Year dinners
specifically at HK$888.88 per person or HK$8888.88 per table or panto.
(Taiwan NT$ if in Taiwan.) Exchange rate is 7.2 HK$ per US$.
That's because 8 is considered lucky for Chinese, since it sounds close
to growth/prosperity (Cantonese: Fat Fat Fat or Hokkien: Huat Huat
Huat.) Even in times of misfortune like this Tiger year, I'm sure Hong
Kong is still going to splurge on such dinners in the hope of attracting
better luck next year.
(Tiger Year is always bad for US President---1998: Monica Lewinsky;
1986: Irangate: 1974: Watergate; 1962: JFK Assasination).
>
>The past five years in Japan was a lot like 1920's Americana, the party in
>Japan is over, we know have a depression generation that is holding there
>cash, and of course that lack of spending is pissing off the world
>consumption system. However I think that the this is the better approach
>from a economic security point of view,
Japan went down in the early nineties, right back in during Bush's
administration, shortly after their stock market collapsed. For the
rest of the Nineties, Japan is actually in some sort of stuttering
economic movement that seems to keep getting worst every year, although
everyone keeps hoping for the better next year.
>
>On the other hand take the US massive credit spending, insane use of credit
>cards, most folks have negative net worth, how long can this last???
>
>Look last week the dollar went down 20% relative to the yen, and we had to
>raise interest rates to keep the world buying our t-bonds.
Just when the Yen is getting competitive and Japanese exporters are
trying to get aggressive again, then the dollar goes down and throws
cold water on them. Money flunctuations like that cost Japanese export
distributors heavy money. In a weak economy you are supposed to have a
weak currency to spur exports, but a weak economy with a strong currency
is a dilemna.
>
>Finally I spent three months last fall in Asia, and even in South Korea,
>things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
>booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is that the
>US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse off than
>we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class nation,
>
You enjoy Shanghai? Wild West frontier town does not do it
justice---that's more applicable to many small towns. Shanghai is
actually, more and more, a city of the future with architecture fitting
for a William Gibson novel. What they are doing there is out of
this world. Most people's view of Shanghai is that romantic image shot
of the Bund with its old European architecture. Look towards the
horizon across the Yangtze, and an incredible city of ultra modern sky
scrapers are being built, spearheaded with that massive tower (I think
it's the Pearl Tower) with that huge metallic globe. I think they're
putting up more skyscrapers there than in Hong Kong.
This ultramodern city is in total contrast to the image Western media
portray to the impression of the outside world as a third world
developing Communist city. The infrastructure, communication,
telephone, roads, etc,. all state of the art.
On the other hand, if they don't fill up those nice shiny buildings with
paying tenants, they're setting themselves up for a real painful real
estate fall.
Rgds,
Chris
>SIncerely,
fathersm...@usa.net
oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
> Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote:
>
> >I have a friend who claims that all the doom and gloom currently being
> >reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
> >is a bunch of nonsense.
> >
> >He claims that the Japanese currently (must) have about US$26 TRILLION
> >in their Postal Savings accounts, or about one million dollars (on
> >average) per family.
>
> They "must" have, eh?
>
> Some sort of "common sense alarm" ought to go off on hearing a claim
> like this. If everybody in Japan is a millionaire that really would
> be something to talk about. But then why are so many Japanese slaving
> away in salarymen's jobs?
Because the Japanese have something which we used to have, about 30 years ago:
"work ethic".
For reference, please see:
a) Japan Statistical Yearbook, 1998, Statistics Bureau, Management &
Coordination Agency, Government of Japan, pgs. 458.
b) The Europa World Yearbook, 1996 Volume 1, 37th Edition, banks.
c) Current Statistics, Standard & Poor's, July 1995, Vol. 61 #7.
d) Journal of Japanese Studies, "How Postal Savings and Public Pensions
Support High Rates of Household Savings in Japan", Stephen J. Anderson, pg.
88.
e) Testimony before Congress of Martin A. Armstrong which reports that Japan's
Postal Savings Accounts contain $10 Trillion
(http://www2.crosswinds.net/san-diego/~manifesto/j3.htm)
f) Personal Savings in Japan, which has been updated since last posted
www2.crosswinds.net/san-diego/~manifesto/japansaving.htm
>
> You don't have to be an economist to refute an absurd number like
> this. Use common sense. Pick up an almanac and look at the real
> savings numbers for different countries. If you start adding up the
> numbers for the major countries you'll soon see that total *world*
> savings is a little more than $30 trillion.
Please post the title of the Almanac and the page number which contains the
information about Japan's savings or savings rate.
>
> Your friend deduces that $26 trillion of this is in Japanese postal
> savings. Then the Japanese also have savings in pensions, life
> insurance, the stock market, and cookie jars. So Japanese savings
> alone exceed total world savings by several trillion?
>
> >His analysis is presented below.
>
> I wouldn't exactly call it "analysis" when he doesn't seem to have
> read his own sources. For instance, your friend says...
>
> >To confirm that the Japanese still save 24% of their incomes, see
> >http://www.nri.co.jp/nri/publications/nriqF/96winter/chap02.html
>
> And following that link, we read:
> "As of 1994, the savings rate had already dropped to 12.8 percent..."
You should read this again before concluding that the above 12.8% is correct.
The article stated the Japanese "on average saved 23.9 percent of their
annual income between 1980 and 1994". Now, for 14 years (and from my
personal knowledge from having lived in Japan, for at least the 30 years
preceding this) the Japanese saved an AVERAGE of 23.9%.
This single article is the only evidence I have found that suggests that this
savings rate in 1994 actually did drop to 12.8%, and it contradicts all of the
inputs from people in Japan today, who report that they still save the same as
they always have.
>
> Not very convincing, that. Less than rigorous as analysis goes.
>
> >Not being an economist myself, I am posting this here hoping for some
> >intelligent and meaningful comments from people who are either:
> >
> >1. Economics scholars themselves
> >or
> >2. Engaged in business in Japan and seeing first hand what is going on
> >
> >Thank you for your comments and input
> >
> >Gary Clark
> >
> >My friend's analysis is below:
>
> Your friends "analysis" is most notable as a Rube Goldberg-like
> construction of false deductions built on mistakes of fact.
>
> If one wants real information on this subject, one need not go through
> all this misspent effort. Just look up the numbers at a source like
> the OECD, http://www.oecd.org , or the Japanese Statistics Bureau,
> whose 'Japan in Figures' web page is at
> http://www.stat.go.jp/1611m.htm
>
> The yen-dollar exchange rate has moved around a lot, but using the
> current rate, for the record, Japanese personal savings are a little
> over $10 trillion. That's a lot, about a third of the world total, but
> nowhere near what your friend deduces.
> Of this $10 trillion, deposits of *all* kinds, including postal
> savings, total about $6 trillion. Life insurance accounts for about
> $2.5 trillion. About $0.5 trillion are in stocks. You can look up the
> exact numbers for it all yourself if you wish.
The above references show the following in Japanese savings accounts:
1) Total Deposits in Domestically
Licensed Banks 477 trillion yen
(Private Deposits grew from 37.5
trillion in 1970 to 402 trillion
in 1996--10% compounded annually)
2) Credit Associations 113 trillion yen
(grew from 24 trillion yen in 1975
to 113.3 trillion yen in 1996--6%
compounded annually)
3) Private Commercial Banks 700 trillion yen
4) Trust Banks 251 trillion yen
5) Shankin 107 trillion yen
6) Foreign Banks 4 trillion yen
7) Postal Savings Accounts 1,200 trillion yen
Total in yen 2,852 trillion yen
Total in dollars $23.7 trillion
>
> In 1996 the average Japanese household had savings of $109,400 and
> liabilities of $41,300, for a net of $68,100. Very good indeed by
> American standards -- but nothing like the $1 million your friend
> deduces.
Are the above numbers from the OECD? Could you post the original cites?
>
> Note that the above figures are set at the exhange-rate value, *not*
> at what they would actually buy.
> The purchasing power parity value of the yen currently is only
> 64% of its exchange rate value, according to the OECD. That means the
> $10 trillion of savings that the Japanese have are worth only $6.4
> trillion in terms of what a dollar buys in the U.S. And the
> purchasing value of the average Japanese household's net $68,100 in
> savings is $43,500.
If it stays in the bank, this is irrelevant. If it is spent in the US, it is
irrelevant. Only if it is spent in Japan, which none of it ever has been,
would it be relevant.
>
> So much for your friend's thesis.
>
> I'll just add a few comments below, between snips.
>
> >* * * *
> >
> >THE JAPANESE ECONOMY
> >
> >* Japanese families save 24% of their incomes each year.
> >* The Japanese "Postal Savings Account" now exceeds $22 Trillion.
> >* Of the World's Top 52 Commercial Banks, 17 are Japanese, with assets
> > of $5.6 Trillion.
>
> And what number does your friend give for the *liabilities* of these
> banks?
Per Reference a) above, pg. 467, Japan's total "Housing Credit and Consumer
Credit" is 25 trillion yen, which is $208 Billion. Compared to the US ($1.2
Trillion in Consumer Credit and $3.7 Trillion in Home Loans) our total
consumer debt is 23 times the size of Japan's consumer debt.
It is ludicrous to say that we have a "Personal Savings Rate" of 0.4%, when
0.4% of GDP would be $28 Billion and when our consumer credit is 175 times
higher than our total "savings". This personal savings number is a mere
accounting error in contrast to the debt.
Japan on the other hand has 113 times as much in savings as in consumer debt.
>
> <snip>
>
> >The Japanese have been saving an average 24% of their incomes since the
> >early 1960s.
>
> Again, your friend's own source gives the Japanese savings rate as
> 12.8%.
Wrong. Read the article again and note that it confirms that Japan's savings
rate for at least the 14 years prior to 1994 was 23.9%. Read Reference d)
above which confirms that Japanese savings tripled in the 10 years between
1975 and 1985.
If Japan was saving at a rate of 23.9% between 1980 and 1994, savings most
likely tripled again from 1985 to 1995.
A drop in the savings rate in Japan from 23.9% to 12.8% is alarming. Japan's
savings rate plunged from being 59 times higher than the US rate to "only" 32
times higher.
>
> >Japanese Real GDP was $5.9 Trillion in 1997,
>
> $4.2 trillion, from the OECD, the keeper of such stats.
The UN reports it as $5.9 Trillion, and it is likely that the difference is in
the "purchasing power parity" you refer to above.
>
> >which means
> >(using the 25% figure) they saved $1,416 Billion in that one year alone.
>
> Among many other things, your friend doesn't know that GDP does not
> equal personal income, so you don't figure personal savings by
> multiplying GDP by the personal savings rate.
>
Correct. The problem in Japan is that GDP is calculated much differently
than it is in the US. For example, Japanese receive a year-end bonus, which
could be half of their salaries. It seems that they do this to avoid
reporting this as income which applies to GDP. This also deflates the
savings figures.
> >Integrated over the last 37 years, and assuming that they started at
> >zero in 1961 -- which considerably reduces this guess -- the Japanese
> >have saved more than $26.2 Trillion in the last 4 decades.
>
> This is getting humorous.
>
> For fun, let's try this. The Japanese savings rate is 12%-13%. Here
> are some actual savings rates for other nations: Portugal 17%, Turkey
> 16%, Korea 24%, Luxembourg 24%, Netherlands 14%, Norway 14%, etc.
> Assume they all started saving at this rate in 1961. Which one of
> them is going to own the world first?
>
Again, the Japanese AVERAGED 23.9% per year for 14 years. Only one reference
suggests that this rate dropped to 12.8%, and this reference is inconsistent
with personal observations of Japanese savings habits.
> <snip>
>
> >To confirm that the Japanese still save 24% of their incomes, see
> >http://www.nri.co.jp/nri/publications/nriqF/96winter/chap02.html
>
> Tell your friend to read the link he provided.
>
> <snip>
>
> >... for Murray Sayle to suggest that Japan's "postal savings ... system
> >now holds, with insurance and pensions, the yen equivalent of $3
> >trillion" is socially and morally and intellectually reprehensible.
>
> Actually, this looks like the one correct number your friend gives:
> The Japanese have about $2 trillion in postal savings and $1 trillion
> in postal insurance contracts.
Please post your cites. Note that the testimony of Martin A. Armstrong before
US Congressional House Way & Means Committee reports Japan's total Postal
Savings Accounts at $10 Trillion (see
http://www2.crosswinds.net/san-diego/~manifesto/j3.htm). He might have been
wrong, but his testimony is consistent with the savings habits of the
Japanese for the last 50 years.
>
> <snip>
>
> >The real sign of idiocy in this article is the following statement:
> >
> > "'If the Nikkei [the Tokyo stock index] drops below twelve
> > thousand, the world economy goes bust.' I checked the papers: the
> > Nikkei, which touched 38,915 on December 29, 1989, was yo-yoing
> > between 14,000 and 15,000. (It is since up.) New York in 1929
> > felt edgy and nervous, old-timers say, just as Japan does in the
> > spring of 1998."
> >
> >First, the math skills of the Japanese are obviously far superior to
> >Murray Sayle's.
>
> Um, if I were your friend I wouldn't criticize anybody else's math
> skills.
>
> <some mathematical nonsense snipped>
>
> > This point must be put in clearer language! The Japanese Nikkei
> > could DISAPPEAR from the face of the earth, and the average
> > Japanese family with the average Japanese portfolio of $1 Million
> > would lose a whopping $2,909 dollars.
>
> Aside from what you know now about Japanese household wealth, your
> friend here is missing the very basic point that Japanese banks,
> unlike US banks, include stock investments in their capital base.
> That's the point of the magic 14,000 Nikkei number on Tokyo
> stock exchange. Under 14,000 Japanese bank capital starts
> disappearing -- reportedly they have to call in $100 billion in loans
> for every 1,000 point drop.
What you are overlooking is the fact that the Japanese don't "invest" in the
stock market. The astounding figure in Reference a) above is that the
Japanese have only 9 billion (NOT trillion as erroneously reported before)
yen in stocks and securities.
9 billion yen is $75 Million, which is less than 0.0004% of what they have in
savings.
Maybe I am reading this wrong? If so, please read it and let me know what
part I missed. $75 Million is such a low number that I don't even believe
it, not because I think the Japanese have decided to become gamblers in the
stock market, but because of how the media has used the Nikkei to convince a
lot of Americans that Japan is in trouble.
> Perhaps you've heard of the "money multiplier" -- how calling in
> one loan can result in many other loans being called in, as in the
> early 1930s.
> Your friend starts by noting that the Japanese have 17 of the
> world's largest banks -- by assets, not "health" or net value.
> Imagine them all imploding at once as their capital disappears.
>
> >Why don't writers ... do the most basic sanity check on their
> >writings and ramblings? Why are they able to get away with such
> >egregious writing?
>
> Now that's a *good* question!
>
> <merciful snip of the rest>
>
>
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
fathersm...@usa.net
cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> >Finally I spent three months last fall in Asia, and even in South Korea,
> >things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
> >booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is that the
> >US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse off than
> >we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class nation,
> >
Do you think it is the US media, or the Japanese media?
Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
world's personal savings, with these stories about how bad the Japanese
economy is doing.
fathersm...@usa.net
> current rate, for the record, Japanese personal savings are a little
> over $10 trillion. That's a lot, about a third of the world total, but
> nowhere near what your friend deduces.
> Of this $10 trillion, deposits of *all* kinds, including postal
> savings, total about $6 trillion. Life insurance accounts for about
> $2.5 trillion. About $0.5 trillion are in stocks. You can look up the
> exact numbers for it all yourself if you wish.
Could you post your cite for this "$0.5 trillion are in stocks"?
My cites show that the real number is 9 billion yen, or a mere $75 million.
Thanks
Mike Fester
: In article <3622e750...@news.mindspring.com>,
: oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
: > Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote:
: >
: > >I have a friend who claims that all the doom and gloom currently being
: > >reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
: > >is a bunch of nonsense.
: > >
: > >He claims that the Japanese currently (must) have about US$26 TRILLION
: > >in their Postal Savings accounts, or about one million dollars (on
: > >average) per family.
: >
: > They "must" have, eh?
: >
: > Some sort of "common sense alarm" ought to go off on hearing a claim
: > like this. If everybody in Japan is a millionaire that really would
: > be something to talk about. But then why are so many Japanese slaving
: > away in salarymen's jobs?
:
: Because the Japanese have something which we used to have, about 30 years ago:
: "work ethic".
Speaking of the "common sense alarm" not going off...
If the Japanese have this "work ethic", then why do almost all studies
indicate that the US worker is more productive? Do the Japanese have a
"work POORLY ethic"?
And $1 M/family in savings should mean that they have more money than
ever; so, how do you account for the fact that domestic consumption is
DOWN, not up? Why the record numbers of bankrupticies? The record
unemployment?
Just out of SHEEREST curiosity, have you ever been to Japan? Can you
find it on the map, even?
Mike
fathersm...@usa.net
"David Ladley" <lad...@panther.middlebury.edu> wrote:
> Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote in article
> <36225941...@words-that-work.org>...
> > I have a friend who claims that all the doom and gloom currently being
> > reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
> > is a bunch of nonsense.
>
> Japanese are sitting on mountains of cash. The only "crisis" is that the
> mountains of cash have stopped growing!
>
> off all sources of national revenue permanently, they'd still have enough
> capital to maintain their current standard of living for 2 or 3 more
> generations. I'd believe that.
>
> Dave Ladley
>
Thank you for seeing through all the bs, Dave, and noting the facts behind the
media myths.
Documented sources put Japan's total savings at $12 Trillion, but they have
been saving 24% of their incomes ever since WWII. There have been some
exceptions during this time, but that was the AVERAGE. Noting that Japan's
median income today is $59,000, and noting that there are 58 million Japanese
workers, suggests that 58 million workers saved last year about $14,160 each,
which adds up to $821 Billion IN ONE YEAR.
If they have been doing this since 1948, then it looks like their total
savings probably exceed $20 Trillion.
Their savings might be even bigger than this. I don't see how the number
could be as low as $12 Trillion when they have been saving such a high
percentage of their incomes for so long. Where did the money go? They put
about a third of it in Postal Savings Accounts, which are themselves reported
to contain $10 Trillion. The other two thirds may be another $20 Trillion.
Why all the stories about doom and gloom in Japan? It sure looks like
somebody doesn't want us to know abou this, doesn't it?
John Knight
Robato Yao
>In article <701jqp$5iu$1...@brokaw.wa.com>,
> cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
>> >things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
>> >booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is that the
>> >US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse off than
>> >we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class nation,
>> >
>
>
>Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
>world's personal savings, with these stories about how bad the Japanese
>economy is doing.
It is neither media. Frankly, I think you are in fantasy if you wish to
imagine that the Japanese are very rich or has the world's savings. You
probably don't deal with Japanese much---I have to deal with them
everyday and I even have a few in my employment.
Yesterday I was in our local K-Mart trying to buy some mailers. Two
Japanese girls, tourists, were loudly scrounging over a large basket of
underwear put on clearance sale. Does that act like a couple of
"millionaires" to you?
Rgds,
Chris
>
>-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
>http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
JonRuth Aikens
failures comes from the "horizontal keiretsu" where the banks and other
large corporations are interrelated capital-wise (cross-shareholding) and
liability-wise (a major group bank tends to hold loans and deposits of other
"group" corporations). Consequently a bank failure affects everybody. This
aspect says nothing about its effect on foreign investment (Japan is a
target for foreign investment as well as a source of capital for foreign
enterprises)...just a thought.
Also, the value of all the yen that the average family saves is
affected...much of their daily consumption goods are imported...their
ability to comfortably weather a "storm" is relative.
--
DA RECTA NON TOLERUNDUM SUNT
Grinch
> oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>> Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote:
>>
>> >I have a friend who claims that all the doom and gloom currently being
>> >reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
>> >is a bunch of nonsense.
>> >
>> >He claims that the Japanese currently (must) have about US$26 TRILLION
>> >in their Postal Savings accounts, or about one million dollars (on
>> >average) per family.
>>
>> They "must" have, eh?
>>
>> Some sort of "common sense alarm" ought to go off on hearing a claim
<snip>
>
>For reference, please see:
>
>a) Japan Statistical Yearbook, 1998, Statistics Bureau, Management &
>Coordination Agency, Government of Japan, pgs. 458.
Actually the Statisitics Bureau doesn't say that at all, see below.
>b) The Europa World Yearbook...
Let's cut all the secondary references and go to the horse's mouth --
the *source* of the data in every yearbook, etc.: The Bank of Japan.
From the BofJ's Dec. 10, 1997 report on personal savings (using
today's exchange rate)...
Total Personal Savings: $8.71 trillion
Of which: In Banks $2.19 trillion
In Postal Savings $1.98 trillion
Read it yourself.
http://www.boj.or.jp/en/siryo/siryo_f.htm
Now, exchange rate changes like we've seen recently can move the total
number around by some percentage, but this is the scale of the *real*
numbers we are talking about. From the definitive source.
Finis.
>> You don't have to be an economist to refute an absurd number like
>> this. Use common sense. Pick up an almanac and look at the real
>> savings numbers for different countries. If you start adding up the
>> numbers for the major countries you'll soon see that total *world*
>> savings is a little more than $30 trillion.
>
>Please post the title of the Almanac and the page number …
*Any* almanac that reports financial data. Take your pick. Find one
that contradicts the above.
>> Your friend deduces that $26 trillion of this is in Japanese postal
>> savings. Then the Japanese also have savings in pensions, life
>> insurance, the stock market, and cookie jars. So Japanese savings
>> alone exceed total world savings by several trillion?
>>
>> >His analysis is presented below.
>>
>> I wouldn't exactly call it "analysis" when he doesn't seem to have
>> read his own sources. For instance, your friend says...
>>
>> >To confirm that the Japanese still save 24% of their incomes, see
>> >http://www.nri.co.jp/nri/publications/nriqF/96winter/chap02.html
>>
>> And following that link, we read:
>> "As of 1994, the savings rate had already dropped to 12.8 percent..."
>
>You should read this again before concluding that the above 12.8% is correct.
>The article stated the Japanese "on average saved 23.9 percent of their
>annual income between 1980 and 1994".
How disingenuous can you be? It doesn't say that at all.
It says "persons in their 30s through 50s" saved at a 23.9% rate --
persons in their peak earning years, saving for retirement. The
population also includes persons in the teens through their nineties,
and their much lower savings rates *are* counted in the national
figure.
Since you quoted from this publication I assume you deem it reliable
and believable. You should read it. Its title is _Facing Up To
Japan's Impending Fiscal Crisis_. The chapter you are quoting from is
called _ The Savings Rate is Falling_.
When you quote this source as support(!) for your argument that
there's no crisis in Japan and its savings rate is staying high, it
certainly throws doubt on the credibility of all your other source
citations, no matter how long a list you draw up.
<snip>
>This single article is the only evidence I have found that suggests that this
>savings rate in 1994 actually did drop to 12.8%,
Yet *you* cited it.
>and it contradicts all of the
>inputs from people in Japan today, who report that they still save the same as
>they always have.
It doesn't contradict the OECD, http://www.oecd.org. Nor does it
contradict any almanac that reports economic data.
As for Japanese household savings, since you asked for the source of
the numbers I gave, even though I already gave it, I'll give it again:
The Statistics Bureau & Statistics Center, Management and Coordination
Agency, Government of Japan -- the same source you quoted above.
The figures again:
1996 Japanese household savings: $109,000. Liabilities: $41,000. Net
savings: $68,100.
Read it youself.
http://www.stat.go.jp/1611m.htm
Item #16 Household Economy, (4) Average Amount of Savings and
Liabilities of Employees' Households
Computed using the current exchange rate.
>> Note that the above figures are set at the exhange-rate value, *not*
>> at what they would actually buy.
>> The purchasing power parity value of the yen currently is only
>> 64% of its exchange rate value, according to the OECD. That means the
>> $10 trillion of savings that the Japanese have are worth only $6.4
>> trillion in terms of what a dollar buys in the U.S. And the
>> purchasing value of the average Japanese household's net $68,100 in
>> savings is $43,500.
>
>If it stays in the bank, this is irrelevant. If it is spent in the US, it is
>irrelevant. Only if it is spent in Japan, which none of it ever has been,
>would it be relevant.
Huh? No Japanese savings have ever been spent in Japan?
The point is that $1 worth of yen spent in Japan buys goods worth only
64 cents by US standards. So you have to deflate the exchange rate
value of Japanese savings accordingly to get a true picture of their
worth.
<snip>
>>
>> So much for your friend's thesis.
>>
>> I'll just add a few comments below, between snips.
>>
>> >* * * *
>> >
>> >THE JAPANESE ECONOMY
>> >
>> >* Japanese families save 24% of their incomes each year.
>> >* The Japanese "Postal Savings Account" now exceeds $22 Trillion.
>> >* Of the World's Top 52 Commercial Banks, 17 are Japanese, with assets
>> > of $5.6 Trillion.
>>
>> And what number does your friend give for the *liabilities* of these
>> banks?
Still waiting for this number.
<snip>
>> >Japanese Real GDP was $5.9 Trillion in 1997 ...
<snip>
> >>which means
>> >(using the 25% figure) they saved $1,416 Billion in that one year alone.
>>
>> Among many other things, your friend doesn't know that GDP does not
>> equal personal income, so you don't figure personal savings by
>> multiplying GDP by the personal savings rate.
>
>Correct. The problem in Japan is that GDP is calculated much differently
>than it is in the US.
Incorrect. GDP is not the same thing as personal income in the US or
anywhere else. So when you compute total savings by multiplying the
savings rate times GDP, and then multiply the result by 37 years, you
have a *big* problem.
>For example, Japanese receive a year-end bonus, which
>could be half of their salaries. It seems that they do this to avoid
>reporting this as income which applies to GDP. This also deflates the
>savings figures.
Oh, I'm *sure* you've got a source that says salaries aren't included
in national accounts when paid through bonuses. ;-) And that this is
why Japanese companies pay bonuses. ;-)
<snip>
>> > This point must be put in clearer language! The Japanese Nikkei
>> > could DISAPPEAR from the face of the earth, and the average
>> > Japanese family with the average Japanese portfolio of $1 Million
>> > would lose a whopping $2,909 dollars.
>>
>> Aside from what you know now about Japanese household wealth, your
>> friend here is missing the very basic point that Japanese banks,
>> unlike US banks, include stock investments in their capital base.
>> That's the point of the magic 14,000 Nikkei number on Tokyo
>> stock exchange. Under 14,000 Japanese bank capital starts
>> disappearing -- reportedly they have to call in $100 billion in loans
>> for every 1,000 point drop.
>
>What you are overlooking is the fact that the Japanese don't "invest" in the
>stock market. The astounding figure in Reference a) above is that the
>Japanese have only 9 billion (NOT trillion as erroneously reported before)
>yen in stocks and securities.
>
>9 billion yen is $75 Million, which is less than 0.0004% of what they have in
>savings.
>
>Maybe I am reading this wrong? If so, please read it and let me know what
>part I missed.
What you are missing is that the Japanese *do* invest in the stock
market in a big way -- through their postal savings accounts and their
pensions. And every time the Nikkei falls near 14,000, a whole bunch
*more* of postal and pension savings is rushed into the stock market
by the government to push the Nikkei back up again.
Japanese postal savings and pension savings don't go into a big
mattress. They've been directed by the government into the stock
market which has fallen by half, into real estate investments that
have lost an average of 40% of their value, and into the capital of
banks that have over $1 trillion of bad debts and which may be largely
insolvent.
Imagine that the Nikkei starts heading south of 14,000. The big banks
that lose their capital go broke -- *poof* go the postal savings
invested in them. The banks have to call in loans on real estate and
made to big companies -- *poof* go the postal savings invested in
them. The bankruptcies through the money multiplier cause a real
recession that makes the stock market plunge -- *poof* go the postal
savings invested in it. (And pensions go *poof* too.)
Are you beginning to see why the Japanese who have put their money
into postal savings are beginning to worry about how they are going to
get their money out?
> $75 Million is such a low number that I don't even believe
>it,
Good for you. That's the start of economic logic.
Steve Sundberg
>
>Documented sources put Japan's total savings at $12 Trillion, but they have
>been saving 24% of their incomes ever since WWII. There have been some
>exceptions during this time, but that was the AVERAGE. Noting that Japan's
>median income today is $59,000, and noting that there are 58 million Japanese
>workers, suggests that 58 million workers saved last year about $14,160 each,
>which adds up to $821 Billion IN ONE YEAR.
>
>If they have been doing this since 1948, then it looks like their total
>savings probably exceed $20 Trillion.
So you're saying that since 1948 no one in Japan has spent one yen at
all of their savings? Not *one* yen? What's been the average savings
rate in the US during the same time? What would you figure the sum
total of savings to be since 1948?
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woo...@my-dejanews.com
cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> In <702urm$2n2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fathersm...@usa.net writes:
> >In article <701jqp$5iu$1...@brokaw.wa.com>,
> > cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> >> >things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
> >> >booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is that
the
> >> >US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse off
than
> >> >we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class nation,
> >> >
> >
> >
> >Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
> >world's personal savings, with these stories about how bad the Japanese
> >economy is doing.
>
> It is neither media. Frankly, I think you are in fantasy if you wish to
> imagine that the Japanese are very rich or has the world's savings. You
> probably don't deal with Japanese much---I have to deal with them
> everyday and I even have a few in my employment.
>
> Yesterday I was in our local K-Mart trying to buy some mailers. Two
> Japanese girls, tourists, were loudly scrounging over a large basket of
> underwear put on clearance sale. Does that act like a couple of
> "millionaires" to you?
***** Actually, the answer is *yes.* I often deal with some rather wealthy
people--often entrepreneurs--and one thing is striking: rich people LOVE a
good deal!!! Perhaps there is a cause and effect there. The awareness of
what's a good deal and the "value of a dollar" is something that sets then
apart. The converse is also true. Often, poor people are among the
least-educated/aware consumers who may spend money on valueless features,
overpay for a good or service, etc.
If you had actually rubbed shoulders with literal millionaires, you might know
this. (Yeah, some are actually cheap SOBs!!! :)
>
> >
> >-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> >http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
>
> (counting down from top 50 oxymorons...)
> 10. Tight slacks
> 9. Definite maybe
> 8. Pretty ugly
> 7. Twelve-ounce pound cake
> 6. Diet ice cream
> 5. Rap music
> 4. Working vacation
> 3. Exact estimate
> 2. Religious tolerance
> And the NUMBER ONE top oxy-MORON
> 1. Microsoft Works
> ---From the Top 50 Oxymorons (thanks to Richard Kennedy)
>
>
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Robato Yao
>In article <703b5o$db0$1...@brokaw.wa.com>,
> cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
>> In <702urm$2n2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fathersm...@usa.net writes:
>> >In article <701jqp$5iu$1...@brokaw.wa.com>,
>> > cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
>> >> >things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
>> >> >booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is that
>the
>> >> >US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse off
>than
>> >> >we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class nation,
>> >> >
>> >
>> >
>> >Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
>> >world's personal savings, with these stories about how bad the Japanese
>> >economy is doing.
>>
>> It is neither media. Frankly, I think you are in fantasy if you wish to
>> imagine that the Japanese are very rich or has the world's savings. You
>> probably don't deal with Japanese much---I have to deal with them
>> everyday and I even have a few in my employment.
>>
>> Yesterday I was in our local K-Mart trying to buy some mailers. Two
>> Japanese girls, tourists, were loudly scrounging over a large basket of
>> underwear put on clearance sale. Does that act like a couple of
>> "millionaires" to you?
>
>***** Actually, the answer is *yes.* I often deal with some rather wealthy
>people--often entrepreneurs--and one thing is striking: rich people LOVE a
>good deal!!! Perhaps there is a cause and effect there. The awareness of
They love a good deal on expensive things. They would love to buy a
diamond studded Rolex worth $25,000 at $21,000, but they're not going t
plug for a $200 Casio.
>what's a good deal and the "value of a dollar" is something that sets then
>apart. The converse is also true. Often, poor people are among the
>least-educated/aware consumers who may spend money on valueless features,
>overpay for a good or service, etc.
Not on panties, you don't.
Years ago, to consider "K-mart" would be outrageous. The Japanese wife
of an American businessman (VP of exports of a paint company) told me in
the best way possible what describes (used) to dictate Japanese lady
purchases---"Signature Items".
>
>If you had actually rubbed shoulders with literal millionaires, you might know
>this. (Yeah, some are actually cheap SOBs!!! :)
>
Actually rubbed shoulders with literal millionaires? If you knew my
real background you won't ask me that question,
but this is not the place to discuss my finances. As a clue, that
anecdote on the Rolex is a true experience.
Rgds,
Chris
Matthew Salter
> > Some sort of "common sense alarm" ought to go off on hearing a claim
> > like this. If everybody in Japan is a millionaire that really would
> > be something to talk about. But then why are so many Japanese slaving
> > away in salarymen's jobs?
Most Japanese are millionaires. A full time job paying less than 1
million yen per year is not worth having.
Matthew
Mike Pest-er
>
> In article <703b5o$db0$1...@brokaw.wa.com>,
> cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> > In <702urm$2n2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fathersm...@usa.net writes:
> > >In article <701jqp$5iu$1...@brokaw.wa.com>,
> > > cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> > >> >things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
> > >> >booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is that
> the
> > >> >US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse off
> than
> > >> >we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class nation,
> > >> >
> > >
> > >
> > >Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
> > >world's personal savings, with these stories about how bad the Japanese
> > >economy is doing.
> >
> > It is neither media. Frankly, I think you are in fantasy if you wish to
> > imagine that the Japanese are very rich or has the world's savings. You
> > probably don't deal with Japanese much---I have to deal with them
> > everyday and I even have a few in my employment.
> >
> > Yesterday I was in our local K-Mart trying to buy some mailers. Two
> > Japanese girls, tourists, were loudly scrounging over a large basket of
> > underwear put on clearance sale. Does that act like a couple of
> > "millionaires" to you?
>
> ***** Actually, the answer is *yes.* I often deal with some rather wealthy
> people--often entrepreneurs--and one thing is striking: rich people LOVE a
> good deal!!! Perhaps there is a cause and effect there. The awareness of
> apart. The converse is also true. Often, poor people are among the
> least-educated/aware consumers who may spend money on valueless features,
> overpay for a good or service, etc.
>
> this. (Yeah, some are actually cheap SOBs!!! :)
>
> >
Uh, huh-huh-huh, what does this have to do with Japan? uh-huh-huh...
fathersm...@usa.net
cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> In <01bdf636$5998e0a0$aecc...@scuttlebutt.middlebury.edu>, "David Ladley"
<lad...@panther.middlebury.edu> writes:
> >Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote in article
> ><36225941...@words-that-work.org>...
> >> reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
> >> is a bunch of nonsense.
> >
> >Japanese are sitting on mountains of cash. The only "crisis" is that the
> >mountains of cash have stopped growing!
> >
> >I heard an analyst estimate in the early 90s that if Japanese were to cut
> >off all sources of national revenue permanently, they'd still have enough
> >capital to maintain their current standard of living for 2 or 3 more
> >generations. I'd believe that.
> >
> >Dave Ladley
>
> Japanese banks?
>
> Rgds,
>
$600 Billion is something in the range of 2-3% of their total *known* savings.
A correction should be made to the above: the mountain of cash has not
stopped growing, it has merely slowed down (reportedly) from a savings rate
of 23.9% per year to "only" 12.8%.
fathersm...@usa.net
dee...@mm.com wrote:
> On Wed, 14 Oct 1998 21:14:39 GMT, fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>
> >
> >Documented sources put Japan's total savings at $12 Trillion, but they have
> >been saving 24% of their incomes ever since WWII. There have been some
> >exceptions during this time, but that was the AVERAGE. Noting that
Japan's
> >median income today is $59,000, and noting that there are 58 million Japanese
> >workers, suggests that 58 million workers saved last year about $14,160 each,
> >which adds up to $821 Billion IN ONE YEAR.
> >
> >If they have been doing this since 1948, then it looks like their total
> >savings probably exceed $20 Trillion.
>
> So you're saying that since 1948 no one in Japan has spent one yen at
> all of their savings? Not *one* yen?
Correct. Now you might argue that there were *some* families who had a net
withdrawal from their savings account in one year, and that those yen "were
spent".
But the AVERAGE savings rate, year after year, has been a net plus of 23.9%
of all average incomes. Even the latest "Japanese economic crisis" consists
of an alleged drop of their savings rate from 23.9% to 12.8% in 1994 (which
is highly suspect). What this means is that, instead of adding $818 billion
to their multi-trillion dollar mountain of cash in 1994, they added only $438
billion.
> What's been the average savings
> rate in the US during the same time? What would you figure the sum
> total of savings to be since 1948?
We don't have any net savings. We have only debt. We have $1.2 trillion in
consumer debt, $3.7 trillion in home loan debt, and a Public Debt of $5.5
trillion. Our "official" Personal Savings "rate" stands right now at 0.4% (see
http://www.agribiz.com/economy/psr.html) which is a whopping $28 billion per
year. If we kept this *aggressive* rate of savings up, and if we used 100% of
it to retire out debt, it would take us only 370 years to pay it off.
Japan could pay off all of its debt, and it could pay off all of our debt, and
still have $10.7 Trillion left over.
John Knight
fathersm...@usa.net
m.sa...@ic.ac.uk wrote:
> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>
> > > Some sort of "common sense alarm" ought to go off on hearing a claim
> > > like this. If everybody in Japan is a millionaire that really would
> > > be something to talk about. But then why are so many Japanese slaving
> > > away in salarymen's jobs?
>
> million yen per year is not worth having.
>
> Matthew
>
Actually, a Japanese engineer makes about $200,000 per year, which is 24
million yen per year (at 120 yen to the dollar). A teacher makes $90,000 per
year, which is about 10.8 million yen.
They still have something which we used to have: "work ethic".
John Knight
fathersm...@usa.net
> > cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> > > In <702urm$2n2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fathersm...@usa.net writes:
> > > > cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> > > >> >Finally I spent three months last fall in Asia, and even in South
Korea,
> > > >> >things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
> > > >> >booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is
that
> > the
> > > >> >US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse
off
> > than
> > > >> >we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class
nation,
> > > >> >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of
the
> > > >world's personal savings, with these stories about how bad the Japanese
> > > >economy is doing.
> > >
> > > It is neither media. Frankly, I think you are in fantasy if you wish to
> > > imagine that the Japanese are very rich or has the world's savings. You
> > > probably don't deal with Japanese much---I have to deal with them
> > > everyday and I even have a few in my employment.
> > >
> > > Yesterday I was in our local K-Mart trying to buy some mailers. Two
> > > Japanese girls, tourists, were loudly scrounging over a large basket of
> > > underwear put on clearance sale. Does that act like a couple of
> > > "millionaires" to you?
> >
> > ***** Actually, the answer is *yes.* I often deal with some rather wealthy
> > people--often entrepreneurs--and one thing is striking: rich people LOVE a
> > good deal!!! Perhaps there is a cause and effect there. The awareness of
> > what's a good deal and the "value of a dollar" is something that sets then
> > apart. The converse is also true. Often, poor people are among the
> > least-educated/aware consumers who may spend money on valueless features,
> > overpay for a good or service, etc.
> >
> > If you had actually rubbed shoulders with literal millionaires, you might
know
> > this. (Yeah, some are actually cheap SOBs!!! :)
> >
> > >
>
> Uh, huh-huh-huh, what does this have to do with Japan? uh-huh-huh...
It has more to do with Japan than you can imagine.
I deal with them in business, and have for a long time. I know both American
and Japanese millionaires, and 99% of them are people you would never guess
had a dime to their name. I know 2 billionaires, and very few people even
know they are billionaires. Even when their pictures show up in the press,
nobody recognizes them.
If you base your estimate of Japan's savings rate on the way they shop, you
will always come up on the short end of the stick. If you ignore the
statistics collected by every major financial institution in the world, and
instead insist that your image of them is more accurate, that is your loss.
fathersm...@usa.net
q376...@bonsai.fernuni-hagen.de (Thomas Henneke) wrote:
> "Aaron M. Renn" <ar...@urbanophile.com> posting with a Microsoft
> Outlook Express 4.72.2106.4 couldn´t resist:
>
> >It's one thing to have lots of money in the bank. It's another to spend it.
> >The problem with the Japanese economy is that no one is spending any of
> >their money, they are hording it in the bank as you mentioned.
You view this as a "problem" only because 99.999% of Americans don't
understand how important savings are. This might be because of the seriously
eroded math skills of Americans (who score 500 on the TIMSS, vs. 605 in Japan
and 607 in Japan).
I guarantee you, the Japanese don't view failing to spend one's savings as a
"problem". It has served them extremely well.
Grinch
>Is that enough to cover about $600 billion dollars worth of bad loans in
>Japanese banks?
>***
>Is it the job of the Japanese people to throw away there savings to the
>banks who speculated, perhaps in the US the people are foolish enough to
>bail-out the risk taking bankers, but maybe the Japanese people aren't so
>stupid ???
The Japanese people have invested their savings in those banks.
That's where their postal savings and pension funds have been directed
by the government. Also into the stock market that has tanked, and
into the real estate market that has tanked.
When money is deposited into a savings or pension account, it's not
stuffed into a jar for safekeeping.
Grinch
>In <702urm$2n2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fathersm...@usa.net writes:
>>Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
>>world's personal savings, with these stories about how bad the Japanese
>>economy is doing.
>.... Frankly, I think you are in fantasy if you wish to
>imagine that the Japanese are very rich or has the world's savings.
It's quite a fantasy too. The Bank of Japan says there are $2 trillion
in postal savings. Above we have the claim that their are up $26
trillion, meaning up to $24 trillion is "hidden."
That's *three times* the total GDP of the US, or roughly the combined
GDPs of the US, Europe and Japan -- the whole developed world..
To hide that much would take a real world-wide conspiracy involving
the governments of all the developed nations, because none of that $24
trillion appears in the international accounts they prepare through
the OECD, which are available for you to read to http://www.oecd.org.
And does anyone believe that an amount equal to three times US GDP
could be "hidden" by one country without the independent financial
professionals of the world noticing? Nah, they've *all* got to be in
on it too. But if everybody's in on it, it's not a secret!
fathersm...@usa.net
Not quite. How can you explain the $11.7 Trillion difference between the
Bank of Japan's estimate, and a simple sanity check calculation? Median 1994
incomes in Japan were $59,000, there are 58 million workers in Japan who
saved an average of 23.9% of their incomes, and Japan has been doing this for
the last 5 decades.
Officially, therefore, they would have saved $818 Billion in 1994, and at
least $20.4 Trillion over the last 5 decades.
Even these numbers could be low. The difference between what the Bank of
Japan reports and reality might be bigger than $11.7 Trillion. How can you
explain the testimony of Martin A. Armstrong before US Congressional House
Way & Means Committee which reports Japan's Postal Savings Accounts contain
$10 Trillion alone (see
http://www2.crosswinds.net/san-diego/~manifesto/j3.htm).
>
> >> You don't have to be an economist to refute an absurd number like
> >> this. Use common sense. Pick up an almanac and look at the real
> >> savings numbers for different countries. If you start adding up the
> >> numbers for the major countries you'll soon see that total *world*
> >> savings is a little more than $30 trillion.
> >
> >Please post the title of the Almanac and the page number …
>
> *Any* almanac that reports financial data. Take your pick. Find one
> that contradicts the above.
The request for the cite was to enable us to see what you are claiming you
see. None of the Almanacs I know of contain this information. If you know of
one, please post the cite so we can confirm your numbers.
>
> >> Your friend deduces that $26 trillion of this is in Japanese postal
> >> savings. Then the Japanese also have savings in pensions, life
> >> insurance, the stock market, and cookie jars. So Japanese savings
> >> alone exceed total world savings by several trillion?
> >>
> >> >His analysis is presented below.
> >>
> >> I wouldn't exactly call it "analysis" when he doesn't seem to have
> >> read his own sources. For instance, your friend says...
> >>
> >> >To confirm that the Japanese still save 24% of their incomes, see
> >> >http://www.nri.co.jp/nri/publications/nriqF/96winter/chap02.html
> >>
> >> And following that link, we read:
> >> "As of 1994, the savings rate had already dropped to 12.8 percent..."
> >
> >You should read this again before concluding that the above 12.8% is correct.
> >The article stated the Japanese "on average saved 23.9 percent of their
> >annual income between 1980 and 1994".
>
> How disingenuous can you be? It doesn't say that at all.
>
> It says "persons in their 30s through 50s" saved at a 23.9% rate --
> persons in their peak earning years, saving for retirement. The
> population also includes persons in the teens through their nineties,
> and their much lower savings rates *are* counted in the national
> figure.
>
To most people, this would be self-evident, but allow me to explain it to
you. The savings rate of people who don't work, who are in school, and who
are retired (i.e., the people under age 20 and in Japan over age 55) is not
counted in the national average. We don't even count them in the average in
the US. We calculate savings rates as a percent of people's incomes.
> Since you quoted from this publication I assume you deem it reliable
> and believable. You should read it. Its title is _Facing Up To
> Japan's Impending Fiscal Crisis_. The chapter you are quoting from is
> called _ The Savings Rate is Falling_.
>
You are ignoring the fact that you are agreeing that it is a "crisis" that
the Japanese savings rate decreased from 59 times higher than the US savings
rate to a "mere" 32 times higher. The article contains some valid data--but
it would take an idiot to agree with the thesis of the article that this is a
"Japanese economic crisis".
> When you quote this source as support(!) for your argument that
> there's no crisis in Japan and its savings rate is staying high, it
> certainly throws doubt on the credibility of all your other source
> citations, no matter how long a list you draw up.
>
> <snip>
> >This single article is the only evidence I have found that suggests that this
> >savings rate in 1994 actually did drop to 12.8%,
>
> Yet *you* cited it.
>
> >and it contradicts all of the
> >inputs from people in Japan today, who report that they still save the same
as
> >they always have.
>
> It doesn't contradict the OECD, http://www.oecd.org. Nor does it
> contradict any almanac that reports economic data.
>
Again, please post the cites.
> As for Japanese household savings, since you asked for the source of
> the numbers I gave, even though I already gave it, I'll give it again:
> The Statistics Bureau & Statistics Center, Management and Coordination
> Agency, Government of Japan -- the same source you quoted above.
>
> The figures again:
>
> 1996 Japanese household savings: $109,000. Liabilities: $41,000. Net
> savings: $68,100.
>
> Read it youself.
> http://www.stat.go.jp/1611m.htm
> Item #16 Household Economy, (4) Average Amount of Savings and
> Liabilities of Employees' Households
>
> Computed using the current exchange rate.
>
> >> Note that the above figures are set at the exhange-rate value, *not*
> >> at what they would actually buy.
> >> The purchasing power parity value of the yen currently is only
> >> 64% of its exchange rate value, according to the OECD. That means the
> >> $10 trillion of savings that the Japanese have are worth only $6.4
> >> trillion in terms of what a dollar buys in the U.S. And the
> >> purchasing value of the average Japanese household's net $68,100 in
> >> savings is $43,500.
> >
> >If it stays in the bank, this is irrelevant. If it is spent in the US, it is
> >irrelevant. Only if it is spent in Japan, which none of it ever has been,
> >would it be relevant.
>
> Huh? No Japanese savings have ever been spent in Japan?
Correct. They put it in the Postal Savings Acounts, and they leave it in
Postal Savings Acounts.
This is called "saving". Novel concept?
>
> The point is that $1 worth of yen spent in Japan buys goods worth only
> 64 cents by US standards. So you have to deflate the exchange rate
> value of Japanese savings accordingly to get a true picture of their
> worth.
But if you aren't using your savings to buy the junk that Americans buy, this
is meaningless. It is meaningful only for the things you do buy--and for the
vast majority of Japanese, this does not include twenty dollar cups of coffee
on the Ginza.
>
> <snip>
> >>
> >> So much for your friend's thesis.
> >>
> >> I'll just add a few comments below, between snips.
> >>
> >> >* * * *
> >> >
> >> >THE JAPANESE ECONOMY
> >> >
> >> >* Japanese families save 24% of their incomes each year.
> >> >* The Japanese "Postal Savings Account" now exceeds $22 Trillion.
> >> >* Of the World's Top 52 Commercial Banks, 17 are Japanese, with assets
> >> > of $5.6 Trillion.
> >>
> >> And what number does your friend give for the *liabilities* of these
> >> banks?
>
> Still waiting for this number.
>
> <snip>
>
You snipped it out. The references above show that Japan's total consumer and
home loan debt is a whopping $178 billion, and that their Public Debt is $1.7
trillion (which is something in the range of 8% of their personal savings.
> >> >Japanese Real GDP was $5.9 Trillion in 1997 ...
> <snip>
> > >>which means
> >> >(using the 25% figure) they saved $1,416 Billion in that one year alone.
> >>
> >> Among many other things, your friend doesn't know that GDP does not
> >> equal personal income, so you don't figure personal savings by
> >> multiplying GDP by the personal savings rate.
> >
> >Correct. The problem in Japan is that GDP is calculated much differently
> >than it is in the US.
>
> Incorrect. GDP is not the same thing as personal income in the US or
> anywhere else. So when you compute total savings by multiplying the
> savings rate times GDP, and then multiply the result by 37 years, you
> have a *big* problem.
>
> >For example, Japanese receive a year-end bonus, which
> >could be half of their salaries. It seems that they do this to avoid
> >reporting this as income which applies to GDP. This also deflates the
> >savings figures.
>
> Oh, I'm *sure* you've got a source that says salaries aren't included
> in national accounts when paid through bonuses. ;-) And that this is
> why Japanese companies pay bonuses. ;-)
No. Maybe you have a cite which explains why your Alamanacs are in such
gross error. For example, the World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1998, pg. 787
reports that Japan's 1995 GDP was $2,680 million, BUT the Statistical
Yearbook, Forty Second Issue, from the United Nations, pg. 167 reports it to
be $5,217 billion.
In other words, virtually every US Almanac under-reports Japan's GDP by a
whopping $2.5 trillion (two and a half trillion dollars). $2,537 billion to be
exact.
Do you know why your Almanac reports Japan's GDP to be $2,537 billion lower
than the UN thinks it is? Do you know how the Almanac estimated Japan's GDP?
Do you think that Japan's real GDP might be even higher than this?
Unless the growth rate of Japan's GDP really did change dramatically,
projecting the UN figures to 1998 puts Japan's 1998 GDP at $7,135 billion.
This is lower than what I know personally about Japanese incomes. Engineers
earn a total of $200,000 in Japan, teachers earn $90,000. This would suggest
that average incomes are probably more in the range of $150,000, and with 58
million workers, 1998 GDP should be in the range of $8.7 trillion.
fathersm...@usa.net
The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Japan, and it is
capitalized at $321 billion. The entire stock market capitalization of Japan
is $3,088 billion. This is a lot of money to a country like us, with our
limited Personal Savings accounts, and with $1.2 Trillion in consumer debt,
$3.7 trillion in home loan debt, and $5.5 trillion in public debt. (Emerging
Stock Markets Factbook, 1997, International Finance Corporation, pg. 24.)
But this is less than 35% of the amount the Bank of Japan claims is in
personal savings, and it is less than 14% of a reasonable estimate of Japan's
total savings.
The stock market capitalization of the US is $8.5 Trillion, but we don't have
the Personal Savings to back it up. Legally, we can borrow up to 90% of the
value of stock, so if the stock market goes down in the US, banks start to
fail. Japanese don't do this, so if their stock market goes down, banks
aren't on the hook in the same way.
In other words, in contrast to the mountain of cash in Japan that is NOT in
the stock market, a total collapse of the Nikkei wouldn't cause a single
Japanese citizen with the average portfolio to jump out of a window.
Mike Fester
: In article <3625E3...@ic.ac.uk>,
: m.sa...@ic.ac.uk wrote:
: > fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
: >
: > > > Some sort of "common sense alarm" ought to go off on hearing a claim
: > > > like this. If everybody in Japan is a millionaire that really would
: > > > be something to talk about. But then why are so many Japanese slaving
: > > > away in salarymen's jobs?
: > Most Japanese are millionaires. A full time job paying less than 1
: > million yen per year is not worth having.
: million yen per year (at 120 yen to the dollar). A teacher makes $90,000 per
How odd. It is your claim, then, that roughly 90% of all Japanese wage
earners would be in the TOP income bracket for tax purposes?
Do you have a source for this?
: year, which is about 10.8 million yen.
:
: They still have something which we used to have: "work ethic".
It seems "we" have active imaginations, though.
Mike
Grinch
>Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
>world's personal savings.
I'm curious. Just *where* do you think they are concealing all these
savings?
If they invested the "hidden" $20+ trillion back in their own economy,
then they'd have $20+trillion more -- almost three times US GDP -- on
the asset side of their national accounts, through all the new
businesses, real estate developments, etc. financed with the money.
OTOH, if they really took the money out of the economy to *hide* it --
like if the postal savings people buried it in a big pit behind the
Emperor's palace -- then they would have extracted from their economy
$20+ trillion without putting anything back in. They'd have *reduced*
their economy by 5 times their own GDP, and all be living in straw
huts.
Money's got to go somewhere. An amount equal to the combined GDPs of
the US, Europe and Japan ought to be visible. Where is it?
Mike Fester
: In other words, in contrast to the mountain of cash in Japan that is NOT in
: the stock market, a total collapse of the Nikkei wouldn't cause a single
: Japanese citizen with the average portfolio to jump out of a window.
When the market dropped from its peak of about 39,000 to around 15,000
in just a few months in 1990, assuredly, more than a few people DID committ
suicide.
Does it bother you being an idiot, or are you OK with that?
Mike
.
Grinch wrote in message <705c6b$gvr$1...@camel29.mindspring.com>...
>fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>
>>Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
>>world's personal savings.
>
>I'm curious. Just *where* do you think they are concealing all these
>savings?
>
>If they invested the "hidden" $20+ trillion back in their own economy,
>then they'd have $20+trillion more -- almost three times US GDP -- on
>the asset side of their national accounts, through all the new
>businesses, real estate developments, etc. financed with the money.
They're all underground. It is part of the Japanese grand economic
conspiracy to rule the post industrial world from bunkers. Vast cities
already exist there, underground, surprising, isn't it?
>
>OTOH, if they really took the money out of the economy to *hide* it --
>like if the postal savings people buried it in a big pit behind the
>Emperor's palace -- then they would have extracted from their economy
>$20+ trillion without putting anything back in. They'd have *reduced*
>their economy by 5 times their own GDP, and all be living in straw
>huts.
That's the next step to hide those underground cities. They plan to fake an
environmental disaster and then move underground. The grass huts will be a
cover story.
>
>Money's got to go somewhere. An amount equal to the combined GDPs of
>the US, Europe and Japan ought to be visible. Where is it?
Underground.
>
>
SUSUPPLY
>> Huh? No Japanese savings have ever been spent in Japan?
>
>Correct. They put it in the Postal Savings Acounts, and they leave it in
>Postal Savings Acounts.
>
>This is called "saving". Novel concept?
Certainly is the way you describe it. What do the Japanese do with their
savings, visit them on week-ends?
Patrick
Robato Yao
>cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
>
>>In <702urm$2n2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fathersm...@usa.net writes:
>
>>>economy is doing.
>
>>.... Frankly, I think you are in fantasy if you wish to
>>imagine that the Japanese are very rich or has the world's savings.
>
>It's quite a fantasy too. The Bank of Japan says there are $2 trillion
>in postal savings. Above we have the claim that their are up $26
>trillion, meaning up to $24 trillion is "hidden."
>
>That's *three times* the total GDP of the US, or roughly the combined
>GDPs of the US, Europe and Japan -- the whole developed world..
>
>To hide that much would take a real world-wide conspiracy involving
>the governments of all the developed nations, because none of that $24
>trillion appears in the international accounts they prepare through
>the OECD, which are available for you to read to http://www.oecd.org.
>
>And does anyone believe that an amount equal to three times US GDP
>could be "hidden" by one country without the independent financial
>professionals of the world noticing? Nah, they've *all* got to be in
>on it too. But if everybody's in on it, it's not a secret!
>
If they actually have all those savings, the big question is this---why
can't they use the savings to come out of the economic rut they are in,
a rut running for about seven years now? Apparently those reserves
are not liquid.
If you have $26 trillion in savings, the amount to be paid on interest
would have to be *staggering*. No bank or savings institution keeps
money, they are almost always reinvested---in stocks, real estate,
banks---probably the real estate of major cities and banks. Yet all
these have taken a downfall, reducing the value of these savings and are
hard to liquifify. How the hell can you sell Tokyo real estate in a
flash at high prices, unless you have to sell low, even below market
value?
Robato Yao
>In article <6vu71r$suu$1...@brokaw.wa.com>,
> cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
>> In <01bdf636$5998e0a0$aecc...@scuttlebutt.middlebury.edu>, "David Ladley"
><lad...@panther.middlebury.edu> writes:
>> >Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote in article
>> ><36225941...@words-that-work.org>...
>> >> reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
>> >> is a bunch of nonsense.
>> >
>> >Japanese are sitting on mountains of cash. The only "crisis" is that the
>> >mountains of cash have stopped growing!
>> >
>> >I heard an analyst estimate in the early 90s that if Japanese were to cut
>> >off all sources of national revenue permanently, they'd still have enough
>> >capital to maintain their current standard of living for 2 or 3 more
>> >generations. I'd believe that.
>> >
>> >Dave Ladley
>>
>> Japanese banks?
>>
>>
>> Chris
>
>$600 Billion is something in the range of 2-3% of their total *known* savings.
Which is not in cash.
>
>A correction should be made to the above: the mountain of cash has not
>stopped growing, it has merely slowed down (reportedly) from a savings rate
>of 23.9% per year to "only" 12.8%.
Yeah right. Much of that mountain is frozen in insoluble assets.
Rgds,
Chris
>
>-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
>http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
(counting down from top 50 oxymorons...)
10. Tight slacks
9. Definite maybe
8. Pretty ugly
7. Twelve-ounce pound cake
6. Diet ice cream
5. Rap music
4. Working vacation
3. Exact estimate
2. Religious tolerance
And the NUMBER ONE top oxy-MORON
1. Microsoft Works
Robato Yao
Oh are you saying that your math is better than the Bank of Japan's?
Rgds,
Chris
Mike Pest-er
>
> In article <36265F...@hotmail.com>,
> Mike Pest-er <pe...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> > woo...@my-dejanews.com wrote:
> > >
> > > cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> > > > In <702urm$2n2$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, fathersm...@usa.net writes:
> > > > >In article <701jqp$5iu$1...@brokaw.wa.com>,
> > > > > cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> > > > >> >Finally I spent three months last fall in Asia, and even in South
> Korea,
> > > > >> >things looked pretty good, lots of new cars, no homeless, Shanghai is
> > > > >> >booming its like a wild-west frontier town, My personal opinion is
> that
> > > the
> > > > >> >US media wants us to believe simply that someone somewhere is worse
> off
> > > than
> > > > >> >we are, but the fact is the US is quickly becoming a second class
> nation,
> > > > >> >
> > > > >
> > > > >Do you think it is the US media, or the Japanese media?
> > > > >
> the
> > > > >world's personal savings, with these stories about how bad the Japanese
> > > > >economy is doing.
> > > >
> > > > imagine that the Japanese are very rich or has the world's savings. You
> > > > probably don't deal with Japanese much---I have to deal with them
> > > > everyday and I even have a few in my employment.
> > > >
> > > > Yesterday I was in our local K-Mart trying to buy some mailers. Two
> > > > Japanese girls, tourists, were loudly scrounging over a large basket of
> > > > underwear put on clearance sale. Does that act like a couple of
> > > > "millionaires" to you?
> > >
> > > ***** Actually, the answer is *yes.* I often deal with some rather wealthy
> > > people--often entrepreneurs--and one thing is striking: rich people LOVE a
> > > good deal!!! Perhaps there is a cause and effect there. The awareness of
> > > what's a good deal and the "value of a dollar" is something that sets then
> > > apart. The converse is also true. Often, poor people are among the
> > > least-educated/aware consumers who may spend money on valueless features,
> > > overpay for a good or service, etc.
> > >
> > > If you had actually rubbed shoulders with literal millionaires, you might
> know
> > > this. (Yeah, some are actually cheap SOBs!!! :)
> > >
> > > >
> >
> > Uh, huh-huh-huh, what does this have to do with Japan? uh-huh-huh...
>
> It has more to do with Japan than you can imagine.
>
> I deal with them in business, and have for a long time.
Uh, I bet you haven't lived in Japan as long as I have, Uh, huh-huh-huh
I know both American
> and Japanese millionaires, and 99% of them are people you would never guess
> had a dime to their name. I know 2 billionaires, and very few people even
> know they are billionaires. Even when their pictures show up in the press,
> nobody recognizes them.
>
Uh, you're dumb uh-huh-huh
> If you base your estimate of Japan's savings rate on the way they shop, you
> will always come up on the short end of the stick.
Uh, stick it up your *pap* SHUT UP BEAVIS!!! uh-huh-huh
If you ignore the
> statistics collected by every major financial institution in the world, and
> instead insist that your image of them is more accurate, that is your loss.
>
Uh, you been doinking sheep lately?
> John Knight
>
> -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
> http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
But, what does this have to do with Japan? uh-huh-huh
Shawn Wilson
It's official, new lows in ignorance and reading comprehension have been
reached. First of all, did you ever ask yourself why an official
Japanese agency would report Japanese economic statistics in dollars?
Could it be that that funny crossed Y symbol has some meaning?
Grinch
Regarding international competitiveness (and the Japanese plot to take
over the world while using a sham recession to fool us naïve
westerners into lowering our guard):
The International Institute for Management Development, in Lausanne,
Switzerland, annually ranks 46 major economies by international
competitiveness after examining 259 different criteria in eight major
categories.
Full results:
http://www.imd.ch/wcy/wcy_online.html
Look who's #1! Not just overall, but in six of the eight categories.
Look who's number 18, dragged down by their miserable national
finances.
P.S.: No credit for guessing who's last -- it's too easy.
Grinch
>The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Japan, and it is
>capitalized at $321 billion. The entire stock market capitalization of Japan
>is $3,088 billion.
Do you *ever* stop to think about numbers you post?
You say the *largest* stock exhange in Japan is capitalized at only
$300 billion. But the Japanese stock markets are capitalized at $3
trillion. Seem odd?
So how many *smaller* stock markets must Japan have for them to be
capitalized at $2.7 trillion total? Ever heard of any of them?
Hmm, maybe we should go to the web site of the Tokyo Stock Exchange,
http://www.tse.or.jp, to verify what its *real* market cap is.
And we find ....
Grinch
> oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>>
>> Good for you. That's the start of economic logic.
I take it back! I *definitely* take it back!!
Grinch
>Grinch wrote ...
>>fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>>
>>>Japan seems to be trying to conceal the fact that they now have all of the
>>
>>I'm curious. Just *where* do you think they are concealing all these
>>savings?
<snip>
>They're all underground. It is part of the Japanese grand economic
>conspiracy to rule the post industrial world from bunkers. Vast cities
>already exist there, underground, surprising, isn't it?
>
>>
>>OTOH, if they really took the money out of the economy to *hide* it --
>>like if the postal savings people buried it in a big pit behind the
>>Emperor's palace -- then they would have extracted from their economy
>>$20+ trillion without putting anything back in. They'd have *reduced*
>>their economy by 5 times their own GDP, and all be living in straw
>>huts.
>
>That's the next step to hide those underground cities. They plan to fake an
>environmental disaster and then move underground. The grass huts will be a
>cover story.
>>
>>Money's got to go somewhere. An amount equal to the combined GDPs of
>>the US, Europe and Japan ought to be visible. Where is it?
>
>Underground.
>>
I'm digging! I'm digging for my fortune. Well, somebody else's
fortune, but finders keepers.
Grinch
>The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Japan, and it is
>capitalized at $321 billion.
Try $2.03 trillion as of the close of trading Thursday.
Source: Tokyo Stock Exchange, http://www.tse.or.jp/STATISTICS/e01.html
So you're only off 6 1/2-fold, which seems about par for you.
Do you *ever* go to a primary source for a number?
<snip>
>The stock market capitalization of the US is $8.5 Trillion, but we don't have
>the Personal Savings to back it up. Legally, we can borrow up to 90% of the
>value of stock, so if the stock market goes down in the US, banks start to
>fail. Japanese don't do this, so if their stock market goes down, banks
>aren't on the hook in the same way.
Exactly 100% wrong on both counts.
U.S. banks can't invest in stocks at all -- see the Glass-Steagall Act
-- much less count them in capital, so they're not on the line if the
market falls.
Japanese banks do invest in stocks, have done so heavily, do count
them capital, and are on the ropes right now in good part because of
the Nikkei's collapse, as they have admitted and whole world knows.
Do you enjoy getting things so ass-backwards in public?
>In other words, in contrast to the mountain of cash in Japan that is NOT in
>the stock market, a total collapse of the Nikkei wouldn't cause a single
>Japanese citizen with the average portfolio to jump out of a window.
So the Japanese have a "mountain" of cash that they haven't invested
in the stock market or anywhere else where it might be at risk.
So I'll ask you again what I asked you before: WHERE IS IT? Are they
hiding the world's biggest cookie jar from our satellites?
Michael L. Coburn
>If they actually have all those savings, the big question is this---why
>can't they use the savings to come out of the economic rut they are in,
>a rut running for about seven years now? Apparently those reserves
>are not liquid.
>
>If you have $26 trillion in savings, the amount to be paid on interest
>would have to be *staggering*. No bank or savings institution keeps
>money, they are almost always reinvested---in stocks, real estate,
>banks---probably the real estate of major cities and banks. Yet all
>these have taken a downfall, reducing the value of these savings and are
>hard to liquifify. How the hell can you sell Tokyo real estate in a
>flash at high prices, unless you have to sell low, even below market
>value?
>
>Rgds,
>
>Chris
If the government creates money and the money is spent on developing
infrastructure and the people save what they receive in salary resulting
from the creating such infrastructure then the infrastructure reflects the
created money. But this is meaningless in regard to individual savings.
Its like "Where did all this money go?". The answer is that it accumulated
in the price of real estate and stocks and bonds. The money was not spent
on consumption and so it was "saved". But it wasn't saved in such a way as
to fix a claim on any foreign goods. I have no desire to own a piece of
land in Tokyo other than as a speculative vehicle and neither does any other
right minded foreigner. If I open a business there I won't be able to
compete because of all their trade laws and good old boy networks. The
"savings" in Japan after the exodus of foreign speculators are as
representative of foregone inflation as they are of foregone consumption.
If barriers to trade are removed and assets are taxed instead of income then
this problem simply disappears.
The same situation in regard to "pent up money" exists in regard to the US
stock market.
Have a nice day.
David Ladley
<70347v$aka$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
> Thank you for seeing through all the bs, Dave, and noting the facts
behind the
> media myths.
>
> Why all the stories about doom and gloom in Japan? It sure looks like
> somebody doesn't want us to know abou this, doesn't it?
Are you familiar with the game of poker? If so, I can use a wonderful
analogy:
Japan is like the poker shark who convinces everyone she's bluffing and is
about to lose her chips, while all the while, she holds an unbeatable hand.
See, Japan has played the game of world economics remarkably shrewdly.
During the 80s, she convinced everyone she was "out to take over the
world". Now that she's made enough cash to provide for her people for
generations, possibly centuries, to come, she can simply collect her chips
and bow out of the game, and sit fat, happy, and unaffected while the rest
of the world's nations compulsively read The Wall Street Journal and grit
their teeth.
Now, the rest of the world might shout "hey that's not fair! you can't
leave the game now -- if you take off with all the game's chips, there's
nothing for us to win, and we're broke!" But Japan just leaves the table
with a chuckle and a wad of cash -- after all, since when has she cared how
any other nation fares?
Dave Ladley
David Ladley
> Japanese girls, tourists, were loudly scrounging over a large basket of
> underwear put on clearance sale. Does that act like a couple of
> "millionaires" to you?
Ah, but you forget that one other thing the Japanese are notorious for is
frugality. Remember, unlike the US, they built most of their enormous stash
with savings, not investments.
Dave Ladley
William F. Hummel
<mik...@gte.net> wrote:
>If the government creates money and the money is spent on developing
>infrastructure and the people save what they receive in salary resulting
>from the creating such infrastructure then the infrastructure reflects the
>created money. But this is meaningless in regard to individual savings.
>Its like "Where did all this money go?". The answer is that it accumulated
>in the price of real estate and stocks and bonds.
You are confusing wealth with money. One's wealth is the sum of
his real assets (RAs), non-liquid financial assets (NLFAs), and
liquid financial assets (LFAs). RAs are tangible things like
real estate, autos, and goods of all kinds. NLFAs are things
that can be sold for money in the financial markets like stocks
and bonds. LFAs are what can be used right now in payment, like
notes, coins, checking accounts, i.e. money.
Wealth can and does vary quickly without any effect on the money
supply. For example, the market value of stocks on the NYSE can
change by billions a day, while money simply changes hands
between buyers and sellers. Money doesn't appear or disappear in
the market, rather the market simply revalues assets. Asset
prices are whatever the market makes them. The money supply is
what the banking system (including the Fed) makes it.
It's common to say that you made or lost a lot of money in the
stock market before you have sold your shares, but neither RAs
nor NLFAs are money until sold. Many a millionaire on paper has
seen his wealth largely disappear because he didn't cash out
while the price of assets was high. Saving in the form of NLFAs
is a fine way to increase your wealth in the long run, but it
shouldn't be confused with money.
William F. Hummel
fathersm...@usa.net
mfe...@iisc.com wrote:
> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
> : In article <3622e750...@news.mindspring.com>,
> : oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
> : > Gary Clark <Ga...@words-that-work.org> wrote:
> : >
> : > >I have a friend who claims that all the doom and gloom currently being
> : > >reported in the world media about the dire state of the Japanese economy
> : > >is a bunch of nonsense.
> : > >
> : > >He claims that the Japanese currently (must) have about US$26 TRILLION
> : > >in their Postal Savings accounts, or about one million dollars (on
> : > >average) per family.
> : >
> : > They "must" have, eh?
> : >
> : > Some sort of "common sense alarm" ought to go off on hearing a claim
> : > be something to talk about. But then why are so many Japanese slaving
> : > away in salarymen's jobs?
> :
ago:
> : "work ethic".
>
> Speaking of the "common sense alarm" not going off...
>
> If the Japanese have this "work ethic", then why do almost all studies
> indicate that the US worker is more productive? Do the Japanese have a
> "work POORLY ethic"?
Take a closer look at these studies. If the US worker WAS more productive,
don't you think that average income of the US worker would be higher than the
average income of the Japanese worker??
The official income of Japanese workers is more than twice that of US workers,
which suggests they are twice as productive. But their real incomes are now
about 3 times that of US workers, which "feels" about right. On top of that,
the average math skills of Japanese workers, judging by the fact that the
average TIMSS score of Japanese students is 605 and of US students is a measly
500, are "considerably" better.
>
> And $1 M/family in savings should mean that they have more money than
> ever; so, how do you account for the fact that domestic consumption is
> DOWN, not up? Why the record numbers of bankrupticies? The record
> unemployment?
In Japan, consumption being down means Personal Savings are up, which is a
positive economic signal to the Japanese. Their "record" unemployment is
still much lower on average than US unemployment.
>
> Just out of SHEEREST curiosity, have you ever been to Japan? Can you
> find it on the map, even?
>
> Mike
>
It is a little blip on my GPS system, so it is easy to find. Besides, I grew
up there.
fathersm...@usa.net
mfe...@iisc.com wrote:
> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>
> : In other words, in contrast to the mountain of cash in Japan that is NOT in
> : the stock market, a total collapse of the Nikkei wouldn't cause a single
> : Japanese citizen with the average portfolio to jump out of a window.
>
> in just a few months in 1990, assuredly, more than a few people DID committ
> suicide.
>
> Does it bother you being an idiot, or are you OK with that?
>
> Mike
>
Post your cite, Mike.
You know of someone in Japan who committed suicide because the market
dropped??
Enlighten us, please.
fathersm...@usa.net
oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>
> >The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Japan, and it is
> >is $3,088 billion.
>
> Do you *ever* stop to think about numbers you post?
>
> You say the *largest* stock exhange in Japan is capitalized at only
> $300 billion. But the Japanese stock markets are capitalized at $3
> trillion. Seem odd?
>
> So how many *smaller* stock markets must Japan have for them to be
> capitalized at $2.7 trillion total? Ever heard of any of them?
I know them all. There are 8 stock markets besides the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
Do you you want a list of them? They contain the other $2.7 Trillion. The
Nikkei is just one indicator in one stock market which represents only 10% of
the total stock market capitalization in Japan.
But even this amount is less than one seventh of the total amount in their
Personal Savings accounts.
I am sorry that I confused you with the facts.
Should I stick to popular anecdotes to keep from confusing you?
Should I just agree with you that a drop in the Nikkei is meaningful in some
way?
What can I do to please you, Grinch, if noticing some factual evidence which
disputes your view of the world makes you so uncomfortable
?
fathersm...@usa.net
You, Grinch, are free to wander around in these touchy, feely reports and
ignore the hard and cold economic facts which show that GDP per Worker in
Japan is 69.5% higher than GDP per Worker in the US. When a report starts
off saying things like:
"Everything is in place for US competitiveness: seven year of continuous
economic expansion (the third longest period of expansion this century),
unemployment at a 24-year low, inflation at a 30-year low and stock exchange
indexes have roughly tripled since 1991."
then I know that it is bogus.
A) GDP per Worker in the US today is one third of what it was in 1973. It
plunged from a solid first place to a shaky 17th place today. It is
MEANINGLESS to talk about "economic expansion" when incomes have been
declining for 25 years, and when they continue to decline.
B) The optimal unemployment rate for competitive economic growth in the
"global economy" is 11-12%, and NOT 5%. A low unemployment rate is BAD NEWS
to economists. A report which starts off making a 5% unemployment rate sound
like good news is amateurish at best.
C) The DJIA reached its peak in 1966 and has never been higher WHEN ADJUSTED
FOR INFLATION. The DJIA in today's dollars was 12,000 in 1966, which is 33%
higher than it has ever been since then, and 4 times higher than it was in
1991. Tripling since 1991 is good news, but it is irresponsible to leave out
the fact that it is still lower than it was 30 years ago.
The rest of this report contains the same level of non-objectivity throughout.
fathersm...@usa.net
oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>
> >The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Japan, and it is
> >capitalized at $321 billion.
>
> Source: Tokyo Stock Exchange, http://www.tse.or.jp/STATISTICS/e01.html
>
> So you're only off 6 1/2-fold, which seems about par for you.
> Do you *ever* go to a primary source for a number?
You obviously did not go to the source, which is the cite I posted yesterday
(Emerging Stock Markets Factbook, 1997, International Finance Corporation, pg.
24.) If you take a close look at your source above, you will understand the
discrepancy. Both sources report that the Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest
stock exchange in Japan, and it is capitalized at $321 billion. The entire
stock market capitalization of Japan is $3,088 billion when the other 8 stock
exchanges in Japan are added.
>
> <snip>
> >The stock market capitalization of the US is $8.5 Trillion, but we don't have
> >the Personal Savings to back it up. Legally, we can borrow up to 90% of the
> >value of stock, so if the stock market goes down in the US, banks start to
> >fail. Japanese don't do this, so if their stock market goes down, banks
> >aren't on the hook in the same way.
>
> Exactly 100% wrong on both counts.
>
> U.S. banks can't invest in stocks at all -- see the Glass-Steagall Act
> -- much less count them in capital, so they're not on the line if the
> market falls.
Individual investors can go to the bank and borrow up to 90% of the value of
their stocks by pledging the stocks as security. This is a dangerous practice
when we lack that little quantity called "Personal Savings".
Japanese citizens would never think of doing that, even if it were legal.
>
> Japanese banks do invest in stocks, have done so heavily, do count
> them capital, and are on the ropes right now in good part because of
> the Nikkei's collapse, as they have admitted and whole world knows.
>
You are ignoring the bigger picture, which is that the total stock market
capitalization of Japan is in the RANGE of 10-30% of their total Personal
Savings. Another 50% drop in stock values might represent a 5% loss of their
total assets.
Since we don't have Personal Savings, and since much of the $8.5 trillion
stock market capitalization in the US is BORROWED from the banks, a 50% drop
in the US stock market would wipe out the banks. This is not because the
banks invested in the stock market, but because they loaned money to
"investors" using stock as collateral.
We "saved" a whopping $28 billion last year. We owe $1.2 trillion in
consumer credit, $5.5 trillion in Public Debt, and $3.7 trillion in home
loans. If the US stock market dropped 50%, we would OWE another $4.2
trillion, because we have nothing to pay the banks back with.
> Do you enjoy getting things so ass-backwards in public?
>
> >In other words, in contrast to the mountain of cash in Japan that is NOT in
> >the stock market, a total collapse of the Nikkei wouldn't cause a single
> >Japanese citizen with the average portfolio to jump out of a window.
>
> So the Japanese have a "mountain" of cash that they haven't invested
> in the stock market or anywhere else where it might be at risk.
>
> So I'll ask you again what I asked you before: WHERE IS IT? Are they
> hiding the world's biggest cookie jar from our satellites?
If you looked at the testimony from Armstrong, $10 trillion is in their Postal
Savings Accounts. If you referred to the Stephen J. Anderson reference, then
you already know that another two thirds of their personal savings are in
"Banks" and "Other Financial Institutions". If you consider that 58 million
Japanese workers earned a median income of $120,000 in 1994 and saved 24% of
those incomes, they could have stuffed $1.7 trillion more in their mattresses
and accounts in just that one year.
They have a mountain of cash stuffed somewhere. Even if Japan's savings rate
did decline to 12.8% in 1995, for the 50 years between 1945 and 1995 they
saved an average of 23.9% of their incomes. A simple extrapolation would put
the total potential savings at $42.5 trillion. The lowest possible estimate
of Japanese incomes would be calculated by using the UN's estimate of Japan's
1995 GDP of $5,217 Billion, divided by 58 million workers, or $89,948 per
worker. If they saved 23.9% of this, total savings in 1995 would have been
$1,246 billion, or $31 trillion over the last 50 years.
fathersm...@usa.net
Is "saving" a novel concept to you?
Believe it or not, Americans used to do this too.
But we now spend 42 cents of each wage dollar for government, while Japan
spends only 20 cents. They put all of this in "savings", plus another 2
cents, and just sit around on weekends watching the grass grow.
During the height of WWII, we spent only 25 cents of each wage dollar for
government
Are you happier now that our governments spend all of that money which you
otherwise would have "wasted" by putting it in your passbook and sitting
around on weekends and watching it grow?
fathersm...@usa.net
Wils...@worldnet.att.net wrote:
> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
> >
> > Not quite. How can you explain the $11.7 Trillion difference between the
> > Bank of Japan's estimate, and a simple sanity check calculation? Median
1994
> > incomes in Japan were $59,000, there are 58 million workers in Japan who
> > saved an average of 23.9% of their incomes, and Japan has been doing this
for
> > the last 5 decades.
> > Officially, therefore, they would have saved $818 Billion in 1994, and at
> > least $20.4 Trillion over the last 5 decades.
> >
> > Even these numbers could be low. The difference between what the Bank of
> > Japan reports and reality might be bigger than $11.7 Trillion. How can you
> > explain the testimony of Martin A. Armstrong before US Congressional House
> > Way & Means Committee which reports Japan's Postal Savings Accounts contain
> > $10 Trillion alone (see
> > http://www2.crosswinds.net/san-diego/~manifesto/j3.htm).
>
> It's official, new lows in ignorance and reading comprehension have been
> reached. First of all, did you ever ask yourself why an official
> Japanese agency would report Japanese economic statistics in dollars?
> Could it be that that funny crossed Y symbol has some meaning?
>
Oh, gosh, I guess you got me there.
btw, did you read what the Bank of Japan reports, and what it does not report?
I didn't think so.
Talk about reading comprehension. You understood it without even reading
it!
Amazing!
jim blair
>
> The Japanese people have invested their savings in those banks.
> That's where their postal savings and pension funds have been directed
> by the government. Also into the stock market that has tanked, and
> into the real estate market that has tanked.
>
> When money is deposited into a savings or pension account, it's not
> stuffed into a jar for safekeeping.
Hi,
While reading this thread, I was wondering what "postal savings" were. I
imagined lots of people buying post office stamps, and was wondering how
secure I would feel if the economy was going into a depression but I had
millions of yen worth of stamps good only to mail letters in Japan.
And even if everyone there has millions of yen in the bank, that is just
paper. Japan needs to import lots of raw materials and food to survive.
Can they pay with postage stamps? Or with paper yen?
I admit that I haven't followed the Japan situation closely. I decided a
few years ago when everyone was worring about the yen, that I had enough
other things to worry about: I vowed not to worry about the yen unless a
yen were worth more than a penny.
I'm still waiting.
--
,,,,,,,
_______________ooo___(_O O_)___ooo_______________
(_)
jim blair (jeb...@facstaff.wisc.edu) For a good time call
http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/4834
jim blair
> We don't have any net savings. We have only debt. We have $1.2 trillion in
> consumer debt, $3.7 trillion in home loan debt, and a Public Debt of $5.5
> trillion. Our "official" Personal Savings "rate" stands right now at 0.4% ......
> Japan could pay off all of its debt, and it could pay off all of our debt, and
> still have $10.7 Trillion left over.
Hi,
How is this consistent with the claim I read that the average US family
had more assets than the average Japanese family?
Or is that true?
Shawn Wilson
>
> In article <3626C105...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Wils...@worldnet.att.net wrote:
> > fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
> > >
> > > Not quite. How can you explain the $11.7 Trillion difference between the
> > > Bank of Japan's estimate, and a simple sanity check calculation? Median
> 1994
> > > incomes in Japan were $59,000, there are 58 million workers in Japan who
> > > saved an average of 23.9% of their incomes, and Japan has been doing this
> for
> > > the last 5 decades.
> > > Officially, therefore, they would have saved $818 Billion in 1994, and at
> > > least $20.4 Trillion over the last 5 decades.
> > >
> > > Even these numbers could be low. The difference between what the Bank of
> > > Japan reports and reality might be bigger than $11.7 Trillion. How can you
> > > explain the testimony of Martin A. Armstrong before US Congressional House
> > > Way & Means Committee which reports Japan's Postal Savings Accounts contain
> > > $10 Trillion alone (see
> > > http://www2.crosswinds.net/san-diego/~manifesto/j3.htm).
> >
> > It's official, new lows in ignorance and reading comprehension have been
> > reached. First of all, did you ever ask yourself why an official
> > Japanese agency would report Japanese economic statistics in dollars?
> > Could it be that that funny crossed Y symbol has some meaning?
> >
>
> Oh, gosh, I guess you got me there.
That's it? The entire basis of your argument just went down the hole
because it didn't occur to you that an official Japanese agency would
report its figures in YEN?
SUSUPPLY
sci.econ, tells us:
>> >The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Japan, and it is
>> >capitalized at $321 billion. The entire stock market capitalization of
>Japan
>> >is $3,088 billion.
and:
>There are 8 stock markets besides the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
>Do you you want a list of them? They contain the other $2.7 Trillion. The
>Nikkei is just one indicator in one stock market which represents only 10% of
>the total stock market capitalization
A little fourth-grade arithmetic gives us 1/9=11.1%.
What this means (please read very slowly) is that the Nikkei cannot be both
10% of total Japanese stock market capitalization and the largest stock market.
The largest has to be higher than 11.1%
Which is why Grinch is asking you:
>> Do you *ever* stop to think about numbers you post?
Not penetrating? How about this:
If 8 stock markets have a capitalization of $2,767 billion (your $2.7 trillion,
actually 2.8) that is an average of $345.9 billion.
Again very slowly, $345.9 billion is a bigger number than $321 billion (your
figure for the Nikkei--the "largest stock exchange in Japan"). Is it necessary
to explain what an average is?
I await your reply.
Patrick
SUSUPPLY
of Changing the Subject With Your Foot In Your Mouth, writes:
>> Certainly is the way you describe it. What do the Japanese do with their
>> savings, visit them on week-ends?
>>
>> Patrick
>>
>
>Is "saving" a novel concept to you?
>
>Believe it or not, Americans used to do this too.
>
>But we now spend 42 cents of each wage dollar for government, while Japan
>spends only 20 cents. They put all of this in "savings", plus another 2
>cents, and just sit around on weekends watching the grass grow.
>
>During the height of WWII, we spent only 25 cents of each wage dollar for
>government
>
>Are you happier now that our governments spend all of that money which you
>otherwise would have "wasted" by putting it in your passbook and sitting
>around on weekends and watching it grow?
And the answer to my question will come when?
Patrick
Robato Yao
>In article <705ig5$okj$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>,
> mfe...@iisc.com wrote:
>> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>>
>> : the stock market, a total collapse of the Nikkei wouldn't cause a single
>> : Japanese citizen with the average portfolio to jump out of a window.
>>
>> in just a few months in 1990, assuredly, more than a few people DID committ
>> suicide.
>>
>> Does it bother you being an idiot, or are you OK with that?
>>
>> Mike
>>
>
>Post your cite, Mike.
>
>You know of someone in Japan who committed suicide because the market
>dropped??
>
>Enlighten us, please.
I actually read reports on this but that was nearly ten years ago in the
newspaper.
Robato Yao
Even this I am not that sure off. I am quite familiar that Japanese
often spend big, even in the most ludicrious stuff, and used to be quite
brand name conscious. (Note the *used to*). For example I know
some Japanese are very avid collectors, even if it's a little beyond
sense. Are you familiar with those 12" Star Wars action figures you can
sometimes see in Toys R Us? They can easily list for over US$200 (more
than ten times their US value) in a collector shop in Tokyo. People who
buy these are otaku that are not necessarily white collar. On the other
hand, I have a friend who invests his savings on Shanghai stocks, and
there is a few small Japanese firms that specialize in covering
mainland Chinese stocks.
A lot of the money in Japanese banks are not necessarily stored in their
own real estate and stocks. A lot of it were loaned abroad---which is
why Japan is very vulnerable to any third world nation crisis (e.g.
Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil). In fact, a lot of it are also tied to the
in loans, to expensive and overpriced real estate in Asia, reminding us
the lesson that these banks never really learned their lesson.
During a conversation with a vice president of a Hawaiian bank, most US
banks already saw the light and already foresaw the Asian economic
crisis and pulled out or scaled back of the Asian market about two to
three years ago, even while it was still booming. In contrast Japanese
banks continued to pour money into these markets, until this bubble also
bursted. The catalyst of this burst was of course the US mutual funds
such as the one led by Soros, and mutual funds are one of the vehicles
of Americans save their money.
My experience with US banks is that their real business is with loans.
Performing loans is how they generate their income, or they can't make
money to operate. They loan money based on the performance of the
debtor company in question and the ability to pay back that money, not
because so and so owns plenty of real estate. Americans may owe a lot
of money sure, but debt per se is not the issue---its the performance of
this debt. It's how capital and monetary resources are
allocated efficiently. It is for example, why America's
greatest technological resources are found in so many startup
companies, and feeds the core of its entrepreneural spirit.
Frankly, it's American banks that are the ones, laughing themselves to
their own banks.
T.Liljeberg
On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
> discrepancy. Both sources report that the Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest
> stock exchange in Japan, and it is capitalized at $321 billion. The entire
> stock market capitalization of Japan is $3,088 billion when the other 8 stock
> exchanges in Japan are added.
I don't get it: Total $3,088 B, in 9 stock exchanges -> average per
exchange = $343 B, compared to Tokyo (the largest) at $321 B.
In other words, the largest is smaller than the average.
How does that work?
Tom
Grinch
>Tom
You *do* get it. This is who you are dealing with.
The man has complained several times in this thread about Americans'
poor math skills. He is Mr. Living Proof.
Grinch
> oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>> > oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>> Let's cut all the secondary references and go to the horse's mouth --
>> the *source* of the data in every yearbook, etc.: The Bank of Japan.
>>
>> From the BofJ's Dec. 10, 1997 report on personal savings (using
>> today's exchange rate)...
>>
>> Total Personal Savings: $8.71 trillion
>>
>> Of which: In Banks $2.19 trillion
>> In Postal Savings $1.98 trillion
>>
>> Read it yourself.
>> http://www.boj.or.jp/en/siryo/siryo_f.htm
>>
>> Finis.
>Not quite. How can you explain the $11.7 Trillion difference between the
>Bank of Japan's estimate, and a simple sanity check calculation?
There's nothing "sane" about your calculations, you are off your
Prozac. Let's work through it, shall we?
>Median 1994
>incomes in Japan were $59,000, there are 58 million workers
*Wrong* That's household income for 43 million households
Source: http://www.stat.go.jp/1611m.htm, Item #2 (4)
Your number is already 34% too high.
> in Japan who
>saved an average of 23.9% of their incomes,
*Wrong* Your own source for this, your *only* source for this, says
the national savings rate for Japan is 12.8%. More on this below.
Your number now already is 118% too high.
>and Japan has been doing this for
>the last 5 decades.
Hey, the years are growing! Before it was only 37 years.
The size of your error now is incalculable as we are dealing with
fantasy.
>Officially,
Officially?? The Bank of Japan numbers are wrong, and your's are now
"Official"? Delusions of grandeur. Time to refill your medication.
> therefore, they would have saved $818 Billion in 1994, and at
>least $20.4 Trillion over the last 5 decades.
And yet the Bank of Japan says $8.71 trillion.
Do you want to explain its calculation error I have explained yours?
Or are you implying acts of deceit and ill will on the B of J's part?
>Even these numbers could be low. The difference between what the Bank of
>Japan reports and reality might be bigger than $11.7 Trillion. How can you
>explain the testimony of Martin A. Armstrong before US Congressional House
>Way & Means Committee which reports Japan's Postal Savings Accounts contain
>$10 Trillion alone (see
>http://www2.crosswinds.net/san-diego/~manifesto/j3.htm).
Very simple.
He made the same mistake YOU make *on your own web page.*
At the top you say:
"Japanese 'Postal Savings Accounts' now exceed $22 Trillion"
At the bottom you give:
Japanese postal savings $10 trillion (120 trillion yen)
Total Japanse savings $23.7 trillion.
Hey, look what you did. At the top you said "postal savings" when you
meant "savings". So did Armstrong. The difference between the two of
you is that he was talking about the *real* number for savings and you
have constructed a fantasy number that *every* authoritative source
contradicts.
I also note that Armstrong was *not* testifying about Japanse savings
-- he was making an offhand comment. And that he is not an authortive
source for anything.
*Anybody* can testify before Congress by asking to get on a
witness list. I have friends who've done it. Even you can do it --
then you can cite yourself.
You have a tremendous appetite for using such fifth-hand "sources"
while ignoring primary ones.
But *the* authoritative source for Japanse savings is the Bank of
Japan. Deal with it. Embrace reality.
>> >> >To confirm that the Japanese still save 24% of their incomes, see
>> >> >http://www.nri.co.jp/nri/publications/nriqF/96winter/chap02.html
>> >>
>> >> And following that link, we read:
>> >> "As of 1994, the savings rate had already dropped to 12.8 percent..."
>> >
>> >You should read this again before concluding that the above 12.8% is correct.
>> >The article stated the Japanese "on average saved 23.9 percent of their
>> >annual income between 1980 and 1994".
>>
>> How disingenuous can you be? It doesn't say that at all.
>>
>> It says "persons in their 30s through 50s" saved at a 23.9% rate --
>> persons in their peak earning years, saving for retirement. The
>> population also includes persons in the teens through their nineties,
>> and their much lower savings rates *are* counted in the national
>> figure.
>>
Now the following is kind of cute.... <g>
>To most people, this would be self-evident, but allow me to explain it to
>you. The savings rate of people who don't work, who are in school, and who
>are retired (i.e., the people under age 20 and in Japan over age 55) is not
>counted in the national average.
Nobody over 55 in Japan has any income? Nobody under 30?
Gee, what do they use to buy food? You've already told us several
times they don't spend their savings.
> We don't even count them in the average in
>the US. We calculate savings rates as a percent of people's incomes.
We count *everybody's* incomes. Teenagers' summer-job incomes.
Retirees' incomes. And so do the Japanse.
So with rigourous logic, you've taken one source saying people "in
their 30s to 50s" saved 23.9% of their income, ignored the statement
in the same source giving the national savings rate as 12.8%, and
concluded -- EUREKA! -- the Japanese national savings rate has been
23.9% for 50 years!
You have a unique talent, sir.
<snip>
>> >This single article is the only evidence I have found that suggests that this
>> >savings rate in 1994 actually did drop to 12.8%,and it contradicts all of the
>> >inputs from people in Japan today....
>>
>> It doesn't contradict the OECD, http://www.oecd.org.
>Again, please post the cites.
Use your mouse to put the cursor on the link, and then click on it.
Alternatively, type in the url "http://www.oecd.org." in your web
browser and hit the <enter> key.
I note you're not real ambitious digging out info from this sort of
source.
>> As for Japanese household savings, since you asked for the source of
>> the numbers I gave, even though I already gave it, I'll give it again:
>> The Statistics Bureau & Statistics Center, Management and Coordination
>> Agency, Government of Japan -- the same source you quoted above.
>>
>> The figures again:
>>
>> 1996 Japanese household savings: $109,000. Liabilities: $41,000. Net
>> savings: $68,000.
>>
>> Read it youself.
>> http://www.stat.go.jp/1611m.htm
>> Item #16 Household Economy, (4) Average Amount of Savings and
>> Liabilities of Employees' Households
You bypassed this. No comment?
Numbers again from the definitive source, indeed the same source *you*
cited.
And they ain't millionaires' numbers.
Grinch
accounts and the power of memory....
>In article <362545bb...@news.mindspring.com>,
> oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>> > oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >THE JAPANESE ECONOMY
>> >> >
>> >> >* Of the World's Top 52 Commercial Banks, 17 are Japanese, with assets
>> >> > of $5.6 Trillion.
>> >>
>> >> And what number does your friend give for the *liabilities* of these
>> >> banks?
>>
>> Still waiting for this number.
>>
>> <snip>
>>
>You snipped it out. The references above show that Japan's total consumer and
>home loan debt is a whopping $178 billion, and that their Public Debt is $1.7
>trillion (which is something in the range of 8% of their personal savings.
So what is the number for the banks' liabilities?
>> >> >Japanese Real GDP was $5.9 Trillion in 1997 which means
>> >> >(using the 25% figure) they saved $1,416 Billion in that one year alone.
>> >>
>> >> Among many other things, your friend doesn't know that GDP does not
>> >> equal personal income, so you don't figure personal savings by
>> >> multiplying GDP by the personal savings rate.
>> >
>> >Correct. The problem in Japan is that GDP is calculated much differently
>> >than it is in the US.
>>
>> Incorrect. GDP is not the same thing as personal income in the US or
>> anywhere else. So when you compute total savings by multiplying the
>> savings rate times GDP, and then multiply the result by 37 years, you
>> have a *big* problem.
>>
>> >For example, Japanese receive a year-end bonus, which
>> >could be half of their salaries. It seems that they do this to avoid
>> >reporting this as income which applies to GDP. This also deflates the
>> >savings figures.
>>
>> Oh, I'm *sure* you've got a source that says salaries aren't included
>> in national accounts when paid through bonuses. ;-) And that this is
>> why Japanese companies pay bonuses. ;-)
>No.
Huzzah!
>Maybe you have a cite which explains why your Alamanacs are in such
>gross error.
Actually, they're your almanacs. I cited the OECD for GDP data, but...
>For example, the World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1998, pg. 787
>reports that Japan's 1995 GDP was $2,680 million, BUT the Statistical
>Yearbook, Forty Second Issue, from the United Nations, pg. 167 reports it to
>be $5,217 billion.
Do you remember when *you* wrote in regard to this, a few posts ago:
>it is likely that the difference is in
>the "purchasing power parity" you refer to above.
Works for me.
>In other words, virtually every US Almanac under-reports Japan's GDP by a
>whopping $2.5 trillion (two and a half trillion dollars). $2,537 billion to be
>exact.
Or maybe the UN over-reported it (accepting, at great risk, your
figures)? How do you know?
Grinch
>In article <3626f992...@news.mindspring.com>,
> oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>>
>> >The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Japan, and it is
>> >capitalized at $321 billion. The entire stock market capitalization of Japan
>> >is $3,088 billion.
>>
>> Do you *ever* stop to think about numbers you post?
>>
>> You say the *largest* stock exhange in Japan is capitalized at only
>> $300 billion. But the Japanese stock markets are capitalized at $3
>> trillion. Seem odd?
>>
>> So how many *smaller* stock markets must Japan have for them to be
>> capitalized at $2.7 trillion total? Ever heard of any of them?
>I know them all. There are 8 stock markets besides the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
>Do you you want a list of them? They contain the other $2.7 Trillion. The
>Nikkei is just one indicator in one stock market which represents only 10% of
>the total stock market capitalization in Japan.
>But even this amount is less than one seventh of the total amount in their
>Personal Savings accounts.
>I am sorry that I confused you with the facts.
>Should I stick to popular anecdotes to keep from confusing you?
>Should I just agree with you that a drop in the Nikkei is meaningful in some
>way?
>What can I do to please you, Grinch, if noticing some factual evidence which
>disputes your view of the world makes you so uncomfortable?
You can note what others have been kind enough to point out:
$2.7 trillion divided by 8 = you are innumerate if you think the
answer is smaller than $321 billion.
Got a "factual" response to that?
Grinch
factual constancy rarely seen even on usenet....
>In article <3626fffd...@news.mindspring.com>,
> oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>>
>> >The Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest stock exchange in Japan, and it is
>> >capitalized at $321 billion.
>>
>> Try $2.03 trillion as of the close of trading Thursday.
>> Source: Tokyo Stock Exchange, http://www.tse.or.jp/STATISTICS/e01.html
>>
>> So you're only off 6 1/2-fold, which seems about par for you.
>> Do you *ever* go to a primary source for a number?
>You obviously did not go to the source, which is the cite I posted yesterday
>(Emerging Stock Markets Factbook, 1997, International Finance Corporation, pg.
>24.)
The correct source for the capitalization of the Tokyo Stock Exchange
is ..... brace yourself ..... the Tokyo Stock Exchange.
http://www.tse.or.jp/STATISTICS/e01.html Click and see.
>If you take a close look at your source above, you will understand the
>discrepancy. Both sources report that the Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest
>stock exchange in Japan, and it is capitalized at $321 billion. The entire
>stock market capitalization of Japan is $3,088 billion when the other 8 stock
>exchanges in Japan are added.
I've got to admit I am at a loss here.
Please explain the descrepancy that is supposed to be explained here,
and how you think it is explained.
I can't seem to get past the fact the Tokyo Stock Exchange says the
Tokyo Stock Exchange's market cap is $2 Trillion. Please, slowly and
carefully explain its error.
>> <snip>
>> >The stock market capitalization of the US is $8.5 Trillion, but we don't have
>> >the Personal Savings to back it up. Legally, we can borrow up to 90% of the
>> >value of stock, so if the stock market goes down in the US, banks start to
>> >fail. Japanese don't do this, so if their stock market goes down, banks
>> >aren't on the hook in the same way.
>>
>> Exactly 100% wrong on both counts.
>>
>> U.S. banks can't invest in stocks at all -- see the Glass-Steagall Act
>> -- much less count them in capital, so they're not on the line if the
>> market falls.
>Individual investors can go to the bank and borrow up to 90% of the value of
>their stocks by pledging the stocks as security.
Irrelevant. The issue is not individuals borrowing against shares.
The issue is shares being counted in banks' capital. Do you know what
bank capital is?
And, of course, you are factually wrong. The limit on margin borrowing
is 50%.
> This is a dangerous practice
>when we lack that little quantity called "Personal Savings".
Um, if the people who borrow against their shares didn't save, how did
they buy their shares?
<snipped -- I'm not sure what, read his post for yourself and try to
figure it out>
>> So the Japanese have a "mountain" of cash that they haven't invested
>> in the stock market or anywhere else where it might be at risk.
>>
>> So I'll ask you again what I asked you before: WHERE IS IT? Are they
>> hiding the world's biggest cookie jar from our satellites?
>If you looked at the testimony from Armstrong, $10 trillion is in their Postal
>Savings Accounts. If you referred to the Stephen J. Anderson reference, then
>you already know that another two thirds of their personal savings are in
>"Banks" and "Other Financial Institutions". If you consider that 58 million
>Japanese workers earned a median income of $120,000 in 1994
Wait a minute.... I just answered a post of yours from yesterday in
which you wrote:
>Median 1994 incomes in Japan were $59,000, there are 58 million Japanse workers
Wow! They doubled their income in one day! They really are doing
great!
>and saved 24% of
>those incomes, they could have stuffed $1.7 trillion more in their mattresses
>and accounts in just that one year.
>They have a mountain of cash stuffed somewhere. Even if Japan's savings rate
>did decline to 12.8% in 1995, for the 50 years between 1945 and 1995 they
>saved an average of 23.9% of their incomes. A simple extrapolation would put
>the total potential savings at $42.5 trillion.
Your web page says only $23 trillion. Something ominous is going on
here.
>The lowest possible estimate
>of Japanese incomes would be calculated by using the UN's estimate of Japan's
>1995 GDP of $5,217 Billion, divided by 58 million workers, or $89,948 per
>worker.
"Lowest possible"? Yesterday you thought $59,000 was possible.
(I'll skip the trivial point that you don't compute personal income by
dividing GDP by heads.)
Grinch
>They have a mountain of cash stuffed somewhere.
WHERE?
If it's invested in their stock market that has collapsed, and in
their real estate market that has collapsed, and in their banks that
are collapsing, then it is fully at risk.
If it's not in these things, *where is it*?
Lets be clear: Your last post talks of $42.5 TRILLION in savings.
That's five times US GDP. Double the GDP of the entire developed
world.
If it exists it must be someplace. You are the only person who thinks
it exists.
TELL US WHERE IT IS!!
Or up your medication.
Markku Stenborg
infinite number of monkeys to write:
[snip]
> You, Grinch, are free to wander around in these touchy, feely reports and
> ignore the hard and cold economic facts which show that GDP per Worker in
> Japan is 69.5% higher than GDP per Worker in the US. When a report starts
The soft & touchy-feely report by the Secret Lobby to Help Japanese
Rule the World (or OECD to you and me) says that per capita GDP of
Japan is 81 % of the per capita GDP of USA.
http://www.oecd.org/publications/figures/money_a.pdf
Perhaps there's a huge unemployment in Japan, so that per worker GDP
can be huge while per capita GDP is low? Maybe almost all Japanese are
capitalists and there are only few workers out there?
[snip]
> A) GDP per Worker in the US today is one third of what it was in 1973. It
> plunged from a solid first place to a shaky 17th place today. It is
> MEANINGLESS to talk about "economic expansion" when incomes have been
> declining for 25 years, and when they continue to decline.
The infinite number of monkeys you've hired do produce nice prose,
though they're no Shakepeare, but why post this garbage on sci.econ?
Even all the greens, socialist, and other members of Regressionary
Conservatives accept that the income per capita in USA have an
increasing trend even after 1973. Are you sure you're looking at
inflation adjusted figures?
[snip]
> C) The DJIA reached its peak in 1966 and has never been higher WHEN ADJUSTED
> FOR INFLATION. The DJIA in today's dollars was 12,000 in 1966, which is 33%
Oh, so you've actually heard of the thing called inflation. Next thing
to do is learn how to use it.
[snip]
> The rest of this report contains the same level of non-objectivity throughout.
Why don't you put this or some similar warning on the top of each of
your posts?
--
© Markku Stenborg
FCA & Turku Biz School
ROT13ed for the hell of it:
zne...@hgh.sv <- out-of-order for the time being
znexxh....@svabsp.sv
Markku Stenborg
infinite number of monkeys to write:
[snip]
> But we now spend 42 cents of each wage dollar for government, while Japan
> spends only 20 cents. They put all of this in "savings", plus another 2
If this means something like taxes or gov't expenditure, the figures
for 1996 are
A B C
Japan 32.0 28.5 28.5
USA 32.0 34.3 27.9
A: Gov't revenue % of GDP
B: Gov't expenditure % of GDP
C: Total tax receipts % of GDP
http://www.oecd.org/publications/figures/pubsec_a.pdf
http://www.oecd.org/publications/figures/tax_a.pdf
[But, then again, looking at the rest of the post, one get's the
impression that to "spend X cents of each wage dollar for government"
means something completely different to mr fathersmanifesto.]
--
Š Markku Stenborg
Markku Stenborg
infinite number of monkeys to write:
[snip]
> > So you're only off 6 1/2-fold, which seems about par for you.
> > Do you *ever* go to a primary source for a number?
>
> You obviously did not go to the source, which is the cite I posted yesterday
> (Emerging Stock Markets Factbook, 1997, International Finance Corporation, pg.
> 24.) If you take a close look at your source above, you will understand the
> discrepancy. Both sources report that the Tokyo Stock Exchange is the largest
> stock exchange in Japan, and it is capitalized at $321 billion. The entire
> stock market capitalization of Japan is $3,088 billion when the other 8 stock
> exchanges in Japan are added.
Must be some Hegelian-Marxian math this guy is using, where you come
to the conclusion by making a synthesis of several contradictions?
[snip]
> > Japanese banks do invest in stocks, have done so heavily, do count
> > them capital, and are on the ropes right now in good part because of
> > the Nikkei's collapse, as they have admitted and whole world knows.
>
> You are ignoring the bigger picture, which is that the total stock market
> capitalization of Japan is in the RANGE of 10-30% of their total Personal
> Savings. Another 50% drop in stock values might represent a 5% loss of their
> total assets.
Umm, do have any idea what "bank capital" is? And what does it mean
when banks buy equities and count these as capital?
What would "bankruptcy" mean to you? When would a corporation such as
a bank go bankrupt?
Or perhaps we should start from more basics; you have any idea what
banks do and how? When you deposit $ 1 k to a bank on frictional
reserve system, what will a bank do w/ it? Would some balance or
accounting books show, eg, that the liabilities of the bank have
increased by the $ 1 k or by some other number?
[The infinite number of monkeys mr/ms fathersmanifesto hired run amok
on his/her keyboard.]
--
© Markku Stenborg
Markku Stenborg
infinite number of monkeys to write:
[snip]
> Not quite. How can you explain the $11.7 Trillion difference between the
> Bank of Japan's estimate, and a simple sanity check calculation? Median 1994
By the insanity of the sanity check calculation?
> incomes in Japan were $59,000, there are 58 million workers in Japan who
GDP per capita for Japan is $ 23.235 using PPP (and $ 36.509 if one
uses average 1996 exchange rate)
http://www.oecd.org/publications/figures/natprod_a.pdf
As a technical note: If you multiply median income by the number of
people, you do not get to their total income. Suppose there were three
individuals and their incomes were 1, 2 and 100, ...
[snip]
> Japan reports and reality might be bigger than $11.7 Trillion. How can you
> explain the testimony of Martin A. Armstrong before US Congressional House
He made a mistake? He is a clueless moron?
[snip]
> > Huh? No Japanese savings have ever been spent in Japan?
>
> Correct. They put it in the Postal Savings Acounts, and they leave it in
> Postal Savings Acounts.
What do you think the Postal Savings Corporation does with the loot?
They bury it backyard, next to the cherrytree? Hide under a tatam?
Fold the notes to form some cute figures, whatcamacallit?
[snip]
Michael L. Coburn
David Ladley wrote in message
<01bdf91f$a79c9080$aecc...@scuttlebutt.middlebury.edu>...
>fathersm...@usa.net wrote in article
><70347v$aka$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>> Thank you for seeing through all the bs, Dave, and noting the facts
>behind the
>> media myths.
>>
>> Why all the stories about doom and gloom in Japan? It sure looks like
>> somebody doesn't want us to know abou this, doesn't it?
>
>Are you familiar with the game of poker? If so, I can use a wonderful
>analogy:
>Japan is like the poker shark who convinces everyone she's bluffing and is
>about to lose her chips, while all the while, she holds an unbeatable hand.
>
>See, Japan has played the game of world economics remarkably shrewdly.
>During the 80s, she convinced everyone she was "out to take over the
>world". Now that she's made enough cash to provide for her people for
>generations, possibly centuries, to come, she can simply collect her chips
>and bow out of the game, and sit fat, happy, and unaffected while the rest
>of the world's nations compulsively read The Wall Street Journal and grit
>their teeth.
>
>Now, the rest of the world might shout "hey that's not fair! you can't
>leave the game now -- if you take off with all the game's chips, there's
>nothing for us to win, and we're broke!" But Japan just leaves the table
>with a chuckle and a wad of cash -- after all, since when has she cared how
>any other nation fares?
>
>Dave Ladley
Why do you believe that I will work for Japan? I don't give a rat's butt
how many chips they have. I don't need chips, you dummy. I need food,
clothing, shelter, and sex. As far as I know Japan does not own much of any
of this (ok, maybe some sex, but I don't really NEED that so much anymore
anyway). The Japanese people have built an IOU based on paper and that IOU
is mostly what the Japanese owe each other. Money and savings represent a
claim on natural resource and the output of production. That is all money
and savings are and if these claims are not enforced, or if such claims
cannot be enforced, then there is no money or savings. Only failure.
Michael L. Coburn
William F. Hummel wrote in message
<36276f99...@nntp.we.mediaone.net>...
>On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 09:04:18 -0700, "Michael L. Coburn"
><mik...@gte.net> wrote:
>
>>If the government creates money and the money is spent on developing
>>infrastructure and the people save what they receive in salary resulting
>>from the creating such infrastructure then the infrastructure reflects
the
>>created money. But this is meaningless in regard to individual savings.
>>Its like "Where did all this money go?". The answer is that it
accumulated
>>in the price of real estate and stocks and bonds.
>
>You are confusing wealth with money. One's wealth is the sum of
>his real assets (RAs), non-liquid financial assets (NLFAs), and
>liquid financial assets (LFAs). RAs are tangible things like
>real estate, autos, and goods of all kinds. NLFAs are things
>that can be sold for money in the financial markets like stocks
>and bonds. LFAs are what can be used right now in payment, like
>notes, coins, checking accounts, i.e. money.
>
>Wealth can and does vary quickly without any effect on the money
>supply. For example, the market value of stocks on the NYSE can
>change by billions a day, while money simply changes hands
>between buyers and sellers. Money doesn't appear or disappear in
>the market, rather the market simply revalues assets. Asset
>prices are whatever the market makes them. The money supply is
>what the banking system (including the Fed) makes it.
>
>It's common to say that you made or lost a lot of money in the
>stock market before you have sold your shares, but neither RAs
>nor NLFAs are money until sold. Many a millionaire on paper has
>seen his wealth largely disappear because he didn't cash out
>while the price of assets was high. Saving in the form of NLFAs
>is a fine way to increase your wealth in the long run, but it
>shouldn't be confused with money.
>
>William F. Hummel
>
I think you are the one who is confused: Money, in WHATEVER form, (EVEN IN
FEDERAL RESERVE NOTES OR YEN OR GOLD COINS), is a claim against "natural
resources and production" (NRP)'s (i.e. an approximation of your "real
assets/RA's", but probably much more definitive). Wealth is a measure of
personal claims in relation to current and future production and natural
resource. If the stock exchange appreciates in value as measured in tokens
then that is of no consequence if all other possible alternatives also
appreciate in value as measured in tokens. The point is that FLA's and
NFLA's are merely tokens to keep track of the our claims on NRP's. All that
matters is what natural resource or capital or consumable these tokens can
be traded for. That Japan owes itself a kabillion dollars is not really
relevant. What the world owes Japan is relevant only in regard to what the
world can and will give Japan. This may or may not be a substantial IOU.
Japan will still have to earn its way as it always has. Japan's "savings"
may make this easier for Japanese people in regard to what other nations OWE
Japan. "Resistance is futile; You will be assimilated", said The Borg.
Grinch
>On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 19:48:08 GMT, fathersm...@usa.net hired an
>infinite number of monkeys
That would take an awful lot of money .... he used the $30 trillion of
missing Japanse savings! Mystery solved.
> to write:
Michael L. Coburn
jim blair wrote in message <3627D7...@facstaff.wisc.edu>...
>fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>
>> We don't have any net savings. We have only debt. We have $1.2 trillion
in
>> consumer debt, $3.7 trillion in home loan debt, and a Public Debt of $5.5
>> trillion. Our "official" Personal Savings "rate" stands right now at 0.4%
......
>> Japan could pay off all of its debt, and it could pay off all of our
debt, and
>> still have $10.7 Trillion left over.
>Hi,
>
>How is this consistent with the claim I read that the average US family
>had more assets than the average Japanese family?
>
>Or is that true?
>
It all depends on how you define and value "real" "assets" as opposed to
claims which is probably reflected in how the world currently values yen and
dollars in relation to ANY third system of tokens.
The average American claims the individual exclusive right to more REAL
STUFF than does the average Japanese. The only way that this could be false
is if the average Japanese claims the individual exclusive right to more
things outside of Japan than does the average American (i.e. there is more
STUFF per American in America than there is STUFF per Japanese in Japan).
That is where we get to the value of claims and the enfocement of claims.
The US has a very large and powerful military force and Japan does not.
This *_MAY_* have some effect upon the value of claims to STUFF outside a
countries borders. It may even be that the average Japanese has less "real"
"assets" than the average American even if the average Japanese claims that
he has more because of the lack of force behind the collection of debts. I
REPEAT _*MAY*_ be, and not _IS_.
SUSUPPLY
>>On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 19:48:08 GMT, fathersm...@usa.net hired an
>>infinite number of monkeys
>
>That would take an awful lot of money .... he used the $30 trillion of
>missing Japanse savings! Mystery solved.
It appears that the monkeys get week-ends off too.
Patrick
Mike Fester
: In article <705ig5$okj$1...@nntp.Stanford.EDU>,
: mfe...@iisc.com wrote:
: > fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
: >
: > : In other words, in contrast to the mountain of cash in Japan that is NOT in
: > : the stock market, a total collapse of the Nikkei wouldn't cause a single
: > : Japanese citizen with the average portfolio to jump out of a window.
: >
: > When the market dropped from its peak of about 39,000 to around 15,000
: > in just a few months in 1990, assuredly, more than a few people DID committ
: > suicide.
: >
: > Does it bother you being an idiot, or are you OK with that?
: Post your cite, Mike.
: You know of someone in Japan who committed suicide because the market
: dropped??
:
: Enlighten us, please.
Lessee, there were articles in the Asahi Shimbun, on NHK News, in the
Japan Times, etc.
Of course, you'd only know this if you PAID ATTENTION during that time.
And anyone like you who "thinks" engineers make $200,000/year and school
teachers make $90,000 isn't paying attention.
Mike
hidenori
As reported in many of financial newspapers and magazines in Japan,
estimated total personal assets amount to 1.2 quadrillion yen (10.4 trillion
US dollars at $1=115 yen exchange rate).
Postal savings (included in the above figure) amount to less than 3 trillion
US dollars.
If you are interested in more discussion about the Japanese economic crisis,
join us at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/japaneconomiccrisis
Hidenori
fathersm...@usa.net
I don't "think" they earn $200,000 per year, I know them. The teacher is an
American who teaches English in Japan.
The UN Statistical Yearbook shows that Japan's GDP grew from $2,418 billion
in 1987 to $5,217 Billion in 1995, in "current prices", a growth of roughly
$350 billion per year. If this growth rate is sustained through 1998, GDP
this year should be in excess of $6,267 billion. With 58 million workers,
this is a GDP/Worker of $108,052.
The number still seems to be low. But even if you accept this, and if you
note that Asiaweek reports that Japan still saves at a rate of 34% of GDP,
the Japanese will save about $2.1 trillion this year.
This is Asiaweek's home page:
http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/95/0922/bottom.html
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
fathersm...@usa.net
real.a...@bottom.of.msg (Markku Stenborg) wrote:
> On Fri, 16 Oct 1998 20:35:31 GMT, fathersm...@usa.net hired an
> infinite number of monkeys to write:
>
> [snip]
>
> > But we now spend 42 cents of each wage dollar for government, while Japan
> > spends only 20 cents. They put all of this in "savings", plus another 2
>
> If this means something like taxes or gov't expenditure, the figures
> for 1996 are
>
> A B C
> Japan 32.0 28.5 28.5
> USA 32.0 34.3 27.9
>
> A: Gov't revenue % of GDP
> B: Gov't expenditure % of GDP
> C: Total tax receipts % of GDP
>
> http://www.oecd.org/publications/figures/pubsec_a.pdf
> http://www.oecd.org/publications/figures/tax_a.pdf
>
>
> © Markku Stenborg
The UN Statistical Yearbook, Forty Second Issue, pg. 207, shows that
"Government Final Consumption Expenditure" for Japan in 1994 was 46,211
billion yen, or $385 billion at 120 yen/dollar. This was 8.2% of its $4,687
billion GDP. When all other taxes are added, the Japanese spend 20 percent
of each wage dollar for government.
The Tax Foundation reports that 42 cents of each American's wage dollar is
spent for government, which is 22 cents more than the Japanese spend.
This is made up of the following:
Federal government $1,561 billion
State governments 837 billion
Local governments 584 billion
total $2,982 billion
US GDP $7,265 billion
Gov't spending/GDP 42%
fathersm...@usa.net
oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
> Move over Jay Hanson, and read what fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
>
> > oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
> >> fathersm...@usa.net wrote:
> >> > oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
>
> >> Let's cut all the secondary references and go to the horse's mouth --
> >> the *source* of the data in every yearbook, etc.: The Bank of Japan.
> >>
> >> From the BofJ's Dec. 10, 1997 report on personal savings (using
> >> today's exchange rate)...
> >>
> >> Total Personal Savings: $8.71 trillion
> >>
> >> Of which: In Banks $2.19 trillion
> >> In Postal Savings $1.98 trillion
> >>
> >> Read it yourself.
> >> http://www.boj.or.jp/en/siryo/siryo_f.htm
> >>
> >> Finis.
>
> >Not quite. How can you explain the $11.7 Trillion difference between the
> >Bank of Japan's estimate, and a simple sanity check calculation?
>
> There's nothing "sane" about your calculations, you are off your
> Prozac. Let's work through it, shall we?
>
> >Median 1994
> >incomes in Japan were $59,000, there are 58 million workers
>
> *Wrong* That's household income for 43 million households
> Source: http://www.stat.go.jp/1611m.htm, Item #2 (4)
>
> Your number is already 34% too high.
Wrong. It is already too *low*.
If you want to talk about GDP per Household, you need to go back to the UN
Statistical Yearbook, which shows that Japan's 1995 GDP was $5,217 billion.
If the savings rate of 34% of GDP, as reported in:
http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/95/0922/bottom.html
is correct, then total savings in 1994 were $1,774 billion, which is an
increase in total savings for EACH of those 43 million households of $41,259
in that one year alone.
>
> > in Japan who
> >saved an average of 23.9% of their incomes,
>
> *Wrong* Your own source for this, your *only* source for this, says
> the national savings rate for Japan is 12.8%. More on this below.
Wrong. You keep on stating the wrong percentage, even though that same
reference [which you obviously read] states that the AVERAGE savings rate in
Japan between 1980 and 1993 was 23.9%. The 12.8% savings rate in 1994 has been
contradicted by every other source, not the least of which is the following
which estimates Japan's savings to be 34% of 1994 GDP:
http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/95/0922/bottom.html
>
> Your number now already is 118% too high.
>
> >and Japan has been doing this for
> >the last 5 decades.
>
> Hey, the years are growing! Before it was only 37 years.
> The size of your error now is incalculable as we are dealing with
> fantasy.
The fact that it was calculated back only 37 years was due only to the fact
that all of the data for previous years had not yet been collected. It is
now apparent that Japan's savings rate has been in the range of 24-34% since
at least WWII.
Japan's after-inflation GDP growth rate averaged 2.7% for that entire period.
The amount they saved each year increased proportionately. IF the Japanese
really did save 34% of GDP during that period, and even if they started with
zero in 1948, there is almost no way they could have less than $28 trillion in
total savings today.
EVEN if you used the "purchasing power parity" adjusted GDP of Japan of
$2,680 billion, and EVEN if you used 24% of household income instead of 34%
of GDP, Japan would STILL have to have more than $20 trillion total in
Personal Savings, considering inflation and interest rates.
John Knight
fathersm...@usa.net
real.a...@bottom.of.msg (Markku Stenborg) wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Oct 1998 18:24:39 GMT, fathersm...@usa.net hired an
>
> >
> > Correct. They put it in the Postal Savings Acounts, and they leave it in
> > Postal Savings Acounts.
>
> What do you think the Postal Savings Corporation does with the loot?
> They bury it backyard, next to the cherrytree? Hide under a tatam?
> Fold the notes to form some cute figures, whatcamacallit?
>
Gosh, Markku, if I put my $10 million in the Bank of America, and then the
Bank of America loans it to Sweden (who by the way already owes too much to
the Paris Club), then I would be a part-owner of Sweden?
So THAT is how it works?
Thanks for the brilliant explanation.
fathersm...@usa.net
oldn...@mindspring.com wrote:
> In which fathersm...@usa.net demonstrates his mastery of the
> accounts and the power of memory....
>
>
> >For example, the World Almanac and Book of Facts, 1998, pg. 787
> >reports that Japan's 1995 GDP was $2,680 million, BUT the Statistical
> >Yearbook, Forty Second Issue, from the United Nations, pg. 167 reports it to
> >be $5,217 billion.
>
> Do you remember when *you* wrote in regard to this, a few posts ago:
>
> >it is likely that the difference is in
> >the "purchasing power parity" you refer to above.
>
> Works for me.
>
> >In other words, virtually every US Almanac under-reports Japan's GDP by a
> >whopping $2.5 trillion (two and a half trillion dollars). $2,537 billion to
be
> >exact.
>
> Or maybe the UN over-reported it (accepting, at great risk, your
> figures)? How do you know?
>
>
It is your theory that Personal Savings deposited in a Japanese Postal
Savings Account should be adjusted downward to take into account "purchasing
power parity"? Would that be your theory it the money were used to buy
things in the US? Or on a shopping spree to Africa?
"Purchasing power parity" takes into account things like the amount of time
Japanese students spend in school (which is less than American students), so
you think the value of their savings should be marked down because they don't
spend so much time in school (even though they score 605 on TIMSS, 105 points
higher than US students)?>?
ppp takes into account "cost of living". If you keep it in a bank and don't
spend it, it is your theory that it should be marked down??
SUSUPPLY
>Gosh, Markku, if I put my $10 million in the Bank of America, and then the
>Bank of America loans it to Sweden (who by the way already owes too much to
>the Paris Club), then I would be a part-owner of Sweden?
>
>So THAT is how it works?
>
>Thanks for the brilliant explanation.
>
>John Knight
So much for your theory of an infinite number of monkeys being able to make
sense, Markku.
Patrick
SUSUPPLY
with:
>When all other taxes are added, the Japanese spend 20 percent
>of each wage dollar for government.
I'm probably going to regret asking this, but just what is your definition of
"wage dollar"?
Is it synonymous with GDP?
Patrick
Markku Stenborg
infinite number of monkeys to write:
[snip]
> The UN Statistical Yearbook shows that Japan's GDP grew from $2,418 billion
> in 1987 to $5,217 Billion in 1995, in "current prices", a growth of roughly
> $350 billion per year. If this growth rate is sustained through 1998, GDP
A big "if", when the growth of GDP in Japan has been about nada for
the last 4 years,
http://www.oecd.org/publications/figures/natprod_a.pdf
> this year should be in excess of $6,267 billion. With 58 million workers,
In actuality, the 1997 GDP in Japan was $ 4,226 G "at current prices
and exchange rates". And the net national saving is 15.4 % of GDP (6 %
for USA).
> this is a GDP/Worker of $108,052.
GDP/per capita = $ 22,235 (using PPP rates). At the OECD site there
are also employment data, so you can check for ourself what the number
is.
[rest of the sillyness snipped]
Markku Stenborg
infinite number of monkeys to write:
> In article <3634d026...@news.helsinki.fi>,
> real.a...@bottom.of.msg (Markku Stenborg) wrote:
[snip]
> The UN Statistical Yearbook, Forty Second Issue, pg. 207, shows that
> "Government Final Consumption Expenditure" for Japan in 1994 was 46,211
> billion yen, or $385 billion at 120 yen/dollar. This was 8.2% of its $4,687
> billion GDP. When all other taxes are added, the Japanese spend 20 percent
> of each wage dollar for government.
Not all gov't expenditure is "Final Consumption". Not all income is
earned as wage. Not all taxes go to gov't expenditure. Not all taxes
come from income, let alone from wages.
> The Tax Foundation reports that 42 cents of each American's wage dollar is
> spent for government, which is 22 cents more than the Japanese spend.
Why don't you compare apples w/ apples. For instance, "spent for
government" != "Government Final Consumption Expenditure" + "all other
taxes".
Check the tables for US from the same UN source you use for Japan. Or
take a look at that OECD site I gave you.
[snip]
Grinch
is in need of a refill, writing:
>I don't "think" they earn $200,000 per year, I know them. The teacher is an
>American who teaches English in Japan.
Yet from the very source you give below, Asiaweek:
Per capita GDP, Japan: $21,328 US: $25,900
>The UN Statistical Yearbook shows that Japan's GDP grew from $2,418 billion
>in 1987 to $5,217 Billion in 1995, in "current prices", a growth of roughly
>$350 billion per year. If this growth rate is sustained through 1998, GDP
>this year should be in excess of $6,267 billion.
Yet your own source, Asiaweek, says: "GDP, Japan: $2,662b."
Does this hurt? Can you explain it?
>With 58 million workers, this is a GDP/Worker of $108,052.
Again, from your source, Asiaweek:
Per capita GDP, Japan: $21,328
Repetition assists learning.
>The number still seems to be low. But even if you accept this, and if you
>note that Asiaweek reports that Japan still saves at a rate of 34% of GDP,
>the Japanese will save about $2.1 trillion this year.
Asiaweek also says the US savings rate is 15%, while you say the US
savings rate is 0.4%
Can you explain this difference? No, of course you can't.
But as I've told you a bunch of times in this thread the national
savings rate does *not* equal the personal savings rate times GDP.
Try to drill that into your thick skull.
Now, since you were so worried about the US's measly 0.4% savings
rate, aren't you happy and relieved that *your own source* puts the US
savings rate at 15%?
>This is Asiaweek's home page:
>
>http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/95/0922/bottom.html
Once more, I suggest that you actually read a source you cite.
Grinch
>Just a quick data:
>
>As reported in many of financial newspapers and magazines in Japan,
>estimated total personal assets amount to 1.2 quadrillion yen (10.4 trillion
>US dollars at $1=115 yen exchange rate).
>
>Postal savings (included in the above figure) amount to less than 3 trillion
>US dollars.
Try telling that to "the man".
>If you are interested in more discussion about the Japanese economic crisis,
>join us at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/japaneconomiccrisis
>
>Hidenori
Friendly advice: Before inviting people on usenet over to your
favorite discussion group, read their posts for a while to see if you
really want them there. They might come.
Regards
Grinch
>It is your theory that Personal Savings deposited in a Japanese Postal
>Savings Account should be adjusted downward to take into account "purchasing
>power parity"? Would that be your theory it the money were used to buy
>things in the US? Or on a shopping spree to Africa?
Do consumers in Japan spend yen in Africa?
>"Purchasing power parity" takes into account things like the amount of time
>Japanese students spend in school
You are an idiot.
>(which is less than American students), so
>you think the value of their savings should be marked down because they don't
>spend so much time in school (even though they score 605 on TIMSS, 105 points
>higher than US students)?>?
Until now I've been lovingly teasing you about you being off your
medication, but the content of the above sentence seems to indicate it
may be true.
>ppp takes into account "cost of living". If you keep it in a bank and don't
>spend it, it is your theory that it should be marked down??
If you don't ever spend it, its purchasing power is ZERO, right?
Note followups are sent to alt.stupidity.
SUSUPPLY
>The UN Statistical Yearbook shows that Japan's GDP grew from $2,418 billion
>in 1987 to $5,217 Billion in 1995, in "current prices", a growth of roughly
>$350 billion per year. If this growth rate is sustained through
1998....
Are you the same fathersmanifesto who wrote this last week:
>Wow! The Japanese economy is going to >shrink by 1.8 percent, and this is a
>"crisis"?
How does the Japanese economy shrink by 1.8% and grow by $350 billion at the
same time?
Is it the same way the Nikkei can be below average and the largest stock
exchange at the same time?
Patrick
hidenori
First of all, savings rate can vary significantly by statistical methods
each organization employs (i.e. what is included and not included in
denominator and numerator).
Second, the GDP figures in US dollars are almost useless nowadays when the
exchange rate can swing in a range of 10 yen in 3 days...
Third, Japan's economy and population have grown significantly in the last
50 years. This means that at the beginning (1945 and later), the population
was much smaller and we were much poorer. So, even with the high savings
rate recorded in the past, the actual amount of savings was not significant
as compared to the amount that is saved nowadays with lower savings rate yet
larger and richer population base.
Furthermore, the problem Japan is facing now is not the drop in the savings
rate. On the contrary, it seems that the high savings rate itself is the
problem. Some of the economists such as Dr. Krugman at MIT argue that
Japan is in a liquidity trap. That is, the country is in a place where the
domestic savings is semi-permanently larger than the domestic investments.
This situation, if it actually exists, will lead to a minimal or no economic
growth (see his article at http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/japan.html). He
thinks that the most probable suspect for the liquidity trap is the Japanese
demography. We know that there will be declining number of workers and
increasing number of retirees in the future. In addition, people are
feeling very uneasy about their own job securities which causes them to
spend less and save even more.
If you are interested in more discussions about the Japanese economic
crisis,
join us at http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/japaneconomiccrisis
ps - thanks Grinch for your advice, but I'll take the chance :o)
Hidenori
fathersm...@usa.net
cro...@kuentos.guam.net (Robato Yao) wrote:
> In <01bdf920$23647de0$aecc...@scuttlebutt.middlebury.edu>, "David Ladley"
<lad...@panther.middlebury.edu> writes:
> >Robato Yao <cro...@kuentos.guam.net> wrote in article
> >> Yesterday I was in our local K-Mart trying to buy some mailers. Two
> >> Japanese girls, tourists, were loudly scrounging over a large basket of
> >> underwear put on clearance sale. Does that act like a couple of
> >> "millionaires" to you?
> >
> >Ah, but you forget that one other thing the Japanese are notorious for is
> >frugality. Remember, unlike the US, they built most of their enormous stash
> >with savings, not investments.
> >
> >Dave Ladley
>
> Even this I am not that sure off. I am quite familiar that Japanese
> often spend big, even in the most ludicrious stuff, and used to be quite
> brand name conscious. (Note the *used to*). For example I know
> some Japanese are very avid collectors, even if it's a little beyond
> sense. Are you familiar with those 12" Star Wars action figures you can
> sometimes see in Toys R Us? They can easily list for over US$200 (more
> than ten times their US value) in a collector shop in Tokyo. People who
> buy these are otaku that are not necessarily white collar. On the other
> hand, I have a friend who invests his savings on Shanghai stocks, and
> there is a few small Japanese firms that specialize in covering
> mainland Chinese stocks.
>
> A lot of the money in Japanese banks are not necessarily stored in their
> own real estate and stocks. A lot of it were loaned abroad---which is
> why Japan is very vulnerable to any third world nation crisis (e.g.
> Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil). In fact, a lot of it are also tied to the
> in loans, to expensive and overpriced real estate in Asia, reminding us
> the lesson that these banks never really learned their lesson.
Japan's total foreign investment is $600 billion, with about half of that in
the US. IF, and I repeat "IF", Japan's total accumulated Personal Savings
are in the range of $30 trillion, this is about 2% of their savings.
That $300 billion might be a lot to a nation like the US, which saved a
whopping $29 billion last year (if the White House page which shows US
Personal Savings to be 0.4% is correct), but it is nothing that will make the
Japanese lose sleep.
>
> During a conversation with a vice president of a Hawaiian bank, most US
> banks already saw the light and already foresaw the Asian economic
> crisis and pulled out or scaled back of the Asian market about two to
> three years ago, even while it was still booming. In contrast Japanese
> banks continued to pour money into these markets, until this bubble also
> bursted. The catalyst of this burst was of course the US mutual funds
> such as the one led by Soros, and mutual funds are one of the vehicles
> of Americans save their money.
>
> My experience with US banks is that their real business is with loans.
> Performing loans is how they generate their income, or they can't make
> money to operate. They loan money based on the performance of the
> debtor company in question and the ability to pay back that money, not
> because so and so owns plenty of real estate. Americans may owe a lot
> of money sure, but debt per se is not the issue---its the performance of
> this debt. It's how capital and monetary resources are
> allocated efficiently. It is for example, why America's
> greatest technological resources are found in so many startup
> companies, and feeds the core of its entrepreneural spirit.
> Frankly, it's American banks that are the ones, laughing themselves to
> their own banks.
>
> Rgds,
>
> Chris
"Bottom Line" in Asiaweek shows that Japan's rate of savings as late as
January 9, 1998 was 31% of GDP.
see http://www.pathfinder.com/asiaweek/98/0109/bottom.html
If Japan is in such a financial crisis, you would think the first sign of this
would be a drop in their rate of savings.
Japan's 1998 GDP is projected by the UN to be $7 trillion. 31% of this is
more than $2 trillion.
Where is the STATISTICAL evidence of this Japanese economic crisis??