5 Comments

• 

  some14some at 10:59 PM JST - 5th August

  Taro Aso, secretary general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, said it is becoming difficult for the government to achieve a budget surplus at the national and local levels on a primary balance basis in the fiscal year through March 2012.

  This is what IMF said few days ago.

• 

  Sarge at 11:06 PM JST - 5th August

  "2011 budget surplus goal"

  I bet President Obama will be jealous of Japan if the Japanese can pull that off, because the U.S. will not have a budget surplus by 2011 even if Obama gets everything he wants from the Democrat-led Congress.

• 

  pathat at 12:28 AM JST - 6th August

  Sarge wrote:

  "2011 budget surplus goal"

  I bet President Obama will be jealous of Japan if the Japanese can pull that off, because the U.S. will not have a budget surplus by 2011 even if Obama gets everything he wants from the Democrat-led Congress.

  Was it not your hero, George W. Bush, who was leading the government at the time in 2001 when Americans were told that the projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion in the next decade-or whatever it was exactly-would allow for tax cuts and a paying down of the federal government`s debt? Now I know there was plenty of bilateral shenanigans to be fair-everybody wanted to have their cake and eat it too-but your boy and his pals like Cheney et al. were leading the way.

  And 8 years later, the federal deficit has skyrocketed several trillion dollars more since George W. Bush was sworn in in January 2001, with so much of it funded by the Chinese and the Japanese. A full reckoning of the damage done by the Bush Junior Hell Years will not be possible for at least a few more years, IMO, something the next president, be he a donkey or an elephant, will be saddled with.

  The last thing the Japanese government should do is to look to the U.S. government for lessons in fiscal planning.

• 

  taikan at 02:21 AM JST - 6th August

  Although generally it is a good idea to eliminate deficit spending and use any budget surplus to pay down existing debt, the urgency of the need to do so depends in part on who holds the government's debt securities.

  If most of the Japanese government's debt is owed to its own citizens and financial institutions, there is little chance of significant outside interference in Japanese fiscal and foreign policy. Therefore, the Japanese government can decide how to act in a given situation without concern for whether it might be offending its creditors. In contrast, most US government debt is owed to foreign governments and financial institutions. As a result, the US must always be careful not to offend its creditors too much, lest they decide to stop financing the debts that the US has been incurring since 2001.

• 

  LIBERTAS at 06:55 AM JST - 6th August

  The Japanese government has backed the country to the wall by its purchase of foreign (US) debt. Were it to sell that debt it would be M.A.D. (Mutually Assured Destruction). There's very little wiggle room left! They can have all the goals they like, but a surplus in 2011, short of zero government spending this year and next and next, is simply unattainable in the foreseeable economic future. (I hear the music: "Summer Jumbo San Oku Yen!")

Register or login to add a comment!