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Strategies & Market Trends : The Epic American Credit and Bond Bubble Laboratory -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (38196)	8/9/2005 1:49:16 PM
From: Tommaso	Respond to of 110194

>>>That is a myth.<< Well, I guess I have to do your research for you. What I am posting below is a very skimpy sampling of available material. Anxiety about the future is one reason Japan's savings rate remains stubbornly high -- currently around 10%, compared with 1% in the U.S. For many years, that helped finance Japanese industry and enabled a high level of investment. Still, economists had expected the savings rate to plummet as Japan's population aged, producing a large number of retirees who spent from their savings. This spending, economists once assumed, would buoy consumption and overall growth. One study around 1990 predicted that Japan's savings rate would fall to around 5% in 2002, and then go negative around 2007. The economists got it wrong. "The savings rate should be declining a lot, but it's hardly going down at all," says Wataru Miyanaga, an Assistant Director in the Economic and Industrial Research Department of the Development Bank of Japan. Other reasons for the high savings: concerns over rising unemployment and a bulge in the thrifty middle-age population. burtonsys.com Asia Week's Bottom Line: Japan saves 34% of GDP versus only 15% in the US. Nomura Research: Japanese households saved an average of 23.9% of their incomes between 1980 and 1994. Princeton Economic Institute: Japan's PSAs (Postal Savings Accounts) contained $10 trillion in 1996. Fortune Magazine: Japan had $13 trillion in postal savings accounts in 1997. International Monetary Fund: Japan's 1992 savings were 34% of GDP compared to only 11% in the US. OECD: Japan's gross private savings rate is 28% of GDP. The Japanese government web site reports: windowsmarketplace.com geocities.com The first possibility is that the inhabitants are wildly profligate. Savings are an essential condition for prosperity. No country can otherwise have a reasonable expectation of achieving growth. But the Japanese are in fact a model of prudence. They have long had the highest national savings rate of all the G7 countries. (OECD data show that gross savings, relative to GDP, are nearly 80% higher in Japan than they are in the UK.) globalagendamagazine.com