the sums involved are enormous. as for savings, Japan's savings rate is close to 30% (i.e. 30% of all disposable income is saved), compared to a negative 0.7% in the US( more is spent than is earned in the 'new era').
Japan produces roughly one third of the world's savings in fact. the latest figures i have for the value of Japan's net external assets are from '99 (source: IMF), at the time they had grown to $1.16 trillion, from $294 billion in 1990. this compares to US external liabilities which increased from $49 billion in '90 to $1.54 trillion in '99. more recent data are available for the BoJs foreign exchange holdings, which increased from $290 billion in mid '99 to $362 billion NOW. assuming that Japan's external assets in totality have undergone similar growth, we can estimate them to amount to somewhere close to $1.45 trillion now. so Japan exports roughly 145 billion dollars annually, an amount that no doubt is growing year after year.
a few not so well known facts about Japan: it is generally assumed that due to the simmering financial and banking crisis, Japan is simply a country 'in crisis'. nothing could be further from the truth. Japan's manufacturing output has for instance surpassed that of the US in the late '90's. its wages are 30% higher. its current account surplus during the '90's has surpassed that of the '80's by a factor of 2.1. the persistent deflation within Japan, which is generally decried as a 'bad thing' in the West, has raised the living standards of ordinary Japanese immensely. not only have prices for electronic gadgets fallen dramatically, but virtually ALL prices have. for instance beer costs now 25% less in Japan than a decade ago. while GDP statistics don't capture this effect of falling prices on ordinary citizen's lives, countless other statistics do: compared to 10 years ago 2.2 million more households own a car, the ratio of video camera owners has doubled ( household penetration of other electronic gadgets has increased similarly), the ratio of mobile phone owners has increased 100-fold, life expectancy has increased by a full year and now surpasses that of the US by 4 years, the number of people vacationing abroad has increased by roughly 60% to over 13 million people,etc.
so while Japan's economy officially languishes, Japan's j6p enjoys a vast increase in his living standard due to deflation. |
