How to spend the Japanese stimulus

As Japan suffers from an export bubble, their challenge is to create domestic demand. That's no small feat considering that exports accounted for 74% of Japan's growth, while domestic spending during the same period was only 6.6%.

As with China, Japan is realized that a heavy reliance on exports makes them vulnerable.

So the focus has shifted to domestic jobs, which should create domestic demand. When Japan invested heavily in infrastructure spending in their last downturn, they already had well maintained roads and bridges, so they ended up with aimless or useless projects.

Politicians are recognizing that those projects only create jobs during construction. Now they are looking for jobs that will have a lasting impact.



http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/06/world/asia/06japan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

Tracking Japanese Stimulus

I'm still gathering numbers on various stimulus packages. According to 1/29/09 WSJ, Japan's series of stimulus measures amount to 75 trillion yen ($842.5 billion). And the Liberal Democratic Party just pushed through an extra fiscal year end (March 31) of 4.8 trillion yen - (nearly $54 billion).

Bernanke's Bank of Japan speech

Interesting speech by Ben Bernanke, Chairman, U.S. Federal Reserve. He sizes up the Bank of Japan's past responses and critiques their quantitative easing bait and switch:

http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/20090129TDY19104.htm