U.S. Faces Second Lost Decade “Because” of Misguided Stimulus
by ilene - October 23rd, 2009 3:45 pm
U.S. Faces Second Lost Decade "Because" of Misguided Stimulus
Courtesy of Mish
Japan has gone through two lost decades, in and out of deflation, with nothing to show for it but increasing debt to GDP and a stock market still 70% below its peak.
Now, Richard Koo of Nomura Research Institute Ltd. says U.S. Risks Japan-Like ‘Lost Decade’ on Stimulus Exit.
U.S. officials contemplating an exit from record fiscal stimulus are in danger of repeating mistakes that plunged Japan into its lost decade of stagnant growth, according to Richard Koo of Nomura Research Institute Ltd.
“This isn’t a cold, its more like pneumonia,” said Koo, author of “Balance Sheet Recession,” a 2003 book about the malaise that hit Japan after its stock and real-estate markets crashed in 1990. “We still need more government spending,” he said, adding it could take “three to five years to get out of this mess, even under the best of circumstances.”
Koo’s comments echo the view of economists including Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, who warn that the U.S.’s likely return to growth in the second half of 2009 doesn’t mean a sustained recovery is assured. The Obama administration aims to rein in a record $1.4 trillion budget deficit as growth returns, seeking to safeguard the value of a declining dollar.
“If you learn your lesson from the Japanese experience, you don’t remove your fiscal stimulus until private sector de- leveraging is over,” Koo, 55, chief economist at the research arm of Japan’s biggest brokerage, said in an interview at his Tokyo office last week. “When we see the private sector coming to borrow again, I’ll be the loudest person on earth arguing for fiscal reform. That’s the exit.”
Koo calculates that the bursting of Japan’s asset bubble in 1990 erased 1,500 trillion yen ($16 trillion) in wealth, equivalent to three times the size of the economy. Companies focused on repaying debt rather than undertaking new projects, causing demand to plummet and triggering a cycle in which cash flows fell, asset prices dropped and balance sheets deteriorated.
This time it’s the U.S. consumer that’s inundated with debt. Household debt soared more than 10 percent each year from 2002 to 2005, when the economy expanded an average of 2.75 percent.
“We have zero interest rates and still nothing’s happening,” Koo said. Businesses and households don’t want to
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.
