Japan Times: Japan may be in recession rather than longest growth phase since the war, key index suggests

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1 MIN READ - Observations about Japan's now third lost decade from the Cautious Optimism Correspondent for Economic Affairs and Other Egghead Stuff

Read Japan Times story here

1 MIN READ - So it's still a few months early to say if this is really a recession, but if it turns out Japan really is headed for one then by my count that will be the third recession in the six years since Abenomics and massive BOJ quantitative easing went into effect—2.5 times the size of the Federal Reserve's QE as a % of GDP.

It would also be Japan's sixth recession in a decade (2008-09, 2010-11, 2012, 2014, 2015, 2019?) during which the government has faithfully enacted consistent stimulus deficit spending plus uber-cheap money policies that went into overdrive with Abenomics in late 2012. So much so that since 1990 Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio has risen from an OECD-best 55% to a world's worst 260% chasing the forever elusive Keynesian stimulus recovery.

Yet there's no shortage of Washington Post and New York Times economics columns hailing Abenomics and BOJ QE as a roaring success that Europe and the USA need to replicate.

The Economics Correspondent has observed these articles always run en force the 50% of the time Japan is not in contraction, but you would think the New Keynesians would bother looking back at the last few years and consider all the recessions too before pushing the West to go down this same road.