Japan's GDP grows 0.2% in April-June as exports fall

just 0.2%? wonder why it took so long to announce such a tiny growth.

Can figures released by the prime ministers office be trusted. I for one won't. Considering how large corporation have doctored their books I won't be surprised if the it was minus and doctored to reflect a miniscule growth and minimize the damage from the markets.

Abe recently proposed 28 trillion yen ($267 billion) in spending initiatives meant to get consumers and businesses to spend more money and support the stalling recovery.

Between taxes, tariffs, tolls, price fixing, and everything else which drives up the cost of everything in Japan, Abe will have to spend a hell of a lot more to get people and businesses to spend more money.

Finding ways to decrease the cost of living, such as lowering taxes and government spending, and eliminating that ridiculous tariffs which cause Japanese to have to pay 2-to-3 times as much for food would give people much more money to spend, and might even make it affordable to have children.

Japanese people are not so stupid not to understand that that 28 trillion yen Abe is doling out is not free. That money has been borrowed at interest, and those who receive it will eventually have to pay it back in for from of even more taxes. It is like giving someone a dollar to buy a cup of coffee, and then demanding a dollar and five cents in return a few days later. And even that money which is not borrowed, but printed out of thin air devalues the existing money in the long run, which has the same net effect; it comes back out of the people's pockets.

Rather than give people money after they have been taxed out of it, it would be better and much more simple not to take it from them in the first place. But the farm lobby has the power to keep Abe and the LDP in office, so the rest of us who are not farmers get stuck with higher food bills, Japan Inc owns the financial system and most of the industry, so they must continue to be subsidized indirectly at the public's expense, and foreign competition must continue to be kept out of the domestic economy, keeping prices high, and allowing price fixing practices to continue. And thus the Humpty Dumpty continues to fall apart, and the only tools Abe and Kuroda have to keep him together are hammers.

Rather than give people money after they have been taxed out of it, it would be better and much more simple not to take it from them in the first place.

You don't understand how an economy works , people are not given money, they work for it. Start here : If you pay with a credit card to buy a cup of coffee you have created credit, which is a promise to deliver money at a later date,whereas, if you pay with money, you have no such liability.(where did you get the money) Somebody has to pick the coffee bean, another person bags it, another ships it and on & on . Simple you have drunk the coffee before the bean picker has been paid. Learn how the machine works before you start talking about Humpty Dumpty.

foreign competition must continue to be kept out of the domestic economy

You must be talking about growing onions and carrots. Japan's economy runs on exports. Businesses are not going to repatriate profits against a strong yen. Thumbs up Cosmos

Yeah the dude is saying and I'll quote

Abe will have to spend a hell of a lot more to get people and businesses to spend more money.

The only way to do that and take the country out of stagnation would be to ...... PRINT

Cosmos1Aug. 15, 2016 - 05:14PM JST

You don't understand how an economy works ,

You don't understand the difference between a developing economy and a developed economy

You don't understand the difference between a developing economy and a developed economy

Give an example in an egg shell and I'll thumb you up.

Nothing "grows" for ever. A new economic model is needed. Yesterday. Could expect a bit more imagination from the economists.

keika1628

Give an example in an egg shell and I'll thumb you up

.Forget the thumps up.

A primitive economy is based on barter.

A developing economy is based on short term contract,

A developed economy is based on..... I'll let you fill in the blank....but here's a hint, it's not barter or short contracts of the exchange of labor for some short term rewards.

A primitive economy is based on barter.

Yes we all know that one , two pigs and you can have my daughter.

A developing economy is based on short term contract,

We know that one too, "if for any reason the debt is not paid and you have used the product we have a problem"

A developed economy is based on..... I'll let you fill in the blank....

Built on managing credit.

You forgot to mention the domestic surplus which Gary would know or "not" KNOW, but let's give credit that he does know and just want to be top cat in his knowledge of how a system works . I would still "thump" him up for effort .

You people may or may not have noticed, but almost all developed countries are suffering from low GDP growth. Japan is not unique.

Low growth and wages in these countries have become a fact of life ever since globalization and free trade started to take hold. It's called "secular stagnation." Get used to it, and prepare to pay the price for the "trickle down" policies our governments have committed themselves to enforcing.

You don't understand how an economy works , people are not given money, they work for it.

I understand very well about how an economy works. And it is based upon value, not money. Labor has value, goods have value, services have value. Money is merely an instrument which allows us to exchange or store the value of our labor, and nothing more. We assign a value to our labor in choosing a job which pays us what we we think our labor is worth, or an employer does it for us, by choosing how much he will pay for a certain job to be done, which is very dependent upon what a potential worker thinks is fair. The prices for goods depend mainly upon what people think is a fair price for them, and also upon what a company thinks generates a fair return for their investment. The value of all things, labor, goods, money, credit, depends mainly on what people assign to them.

Start here : If you pay with a credit card to buy a cup of coffee you have created credit, which is a promise to deliver money at a later date,whereas, if you pay with money, you have no such liability.(where did you get the money) Somebody has to pick the coffee bean, another person bags it, another ships it and on & on . Simple you have drunk the coffee before the bean picker has been paid. Learn how the machine works before you start talking about Humpty Dumpty.

Start here: there is a liability regardless of when something is paid for. If you pay cash, you are liable now, if you pay with credit, you are liable when you agree to pay; either way, the money is exchanged for the cup of coffee. If the coffee seller earns enough profit on his coffee, he will continue to sell coffee, and buy coffee beans from farmers. If you are borrowing the money for your coffee from a third party, like a credit card provider, they are liable for the coffee the moment your card is swiped, and you are liable for the cost when you receive your credit card bill. The card provider charges a fee for their service; to the coffee shop, because coffees shops accept credit cards because they think increased custom will more than make up for the merchant's fee they pay the card company, or to you, if you carry a balance and are charged interest upon it. In the end, it is all the exchange of value transmitted by cash or credit card, or water and coffee beans, and possibly facilitated by a credit provider. If the coffee seller earns a profit selling coffee, he will buy more means from the coffee farms, and the farms will pay pickers to pick coffee beans, and shippers will be paid to move the coffee to wherever it is poured into a cup.

The problem with Japan and Humpty Dumpty is that control over value has been taken out of the hands of the people, and put into the hands of the politicians and the BOJ. The people, who are supposed to be in charge of the politicians, the central bank, and the country itself, find themselves no longer in control. The central bank now determines what a fair interest rate it, it also tries to control the value of money, which means it also tries to control the value of all goods, your wages, and your savings. By saying that they need 2% inflation (what they euphemistically call a "price stability target"), what they are really doing is robbing your savings and wages of 2% of their value in order to finance their continued mismanagement of the economy. Inflation is a tax, it has always been a tax, it always will be a tax.

They need to control the value of money because decades of vote buying, favor currying, and cronyism have resulted in fantastic levels of debt. Another result of these practices has resulted in a overly protected and non-competetive economy where the cost of living has escalated beyond what the people consider a fair value. As a result, they spend less, and as a further result, companies earn less, and have less to pay salaries and pay taxes.

Since the debt is so high, and debt servicing costs make up more than one-fourth of government spending, the government must find ways to try to keep the money coming in. Since there is no real line between Japan's political system and business system, both work hand-in-hand to stay solvent. The government borrows and spends the taxpayer's money in the form of "stimulus", and transfers this money to Japan Inc, who use it to keep their zombie companies ambulatory. It is like you losing your job, and paying your expenses with a credit card, and when the first cart maxes out, you transfer the balance to another card, and so on. The balance continues to increase, even though the means to pay the balance is reduced, or doesn't exist.

The purported reason to weaken the yen is to increase exports, but most people don't know that Japan Inc sells most of it's goods domestically. A weak yen does make Japanese exports cheaper, but it also makes imports more expensive, keeping the domestic economy captive to Japan Inc. The entire national economy is in the hands of Japan Inc, and it's cronies in the LDP, and they will continue to milk it for everything they can, no matter how much it costs the taxpayers.

The greatest thing overlooked in economics is the necessity of competition. Competition brings us new technology, new goods, new services, and, most important, assigns a truer value to the cost of labor, goods, and services. When competition is not allowed, or restricted, we end up with lower quality goods at higher prices. In the end, regardless of the manipulation of value, by manipulating currency, interest rates, assigning tariffs to imports, or keeping competition out, in the end, value always wins, which is why we have recessions and depressions. These are the result of the collapse of a unnaturally manipulated economic system being pulled back into reality by the people, who are the final law in anything economic.

I have said it before; the LDP and the BOJ's method of trying to cause economic growth by borrowing money it doesn't have, and printing more in addition, without doing anything to address the cause of the problem is like drilling holes in the hull of a sinking ship to let out the water; the ship will only sink that much faster.