At the beginning of this year there was a really interesting discussion regarding Japan's economic situation developing. Eamonn Fingleton, a former Forbes and Financial Times editor, was questioning the prevailing opinion about Japan's lost two decades by the media.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/08/opinion/sunday/the-true-story-of-japans-economic-success.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=all--
He had come up with those arguments before, but only has got a wider audience with his article in the New York Times. Basically, he is scrutinising and questioning the Japan's "basket case" assumption of an economy that has been having a dismal performance and no chance of turning it around. He is presenting a few economic performance figures, like current account surpluses, unemployment rate among others, that seem to contradict the doomsayers.
A very interesting rebuttal to Fingleton's arguments can be found on the internetpage Spike Japan.
http://spikejapan.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/spiked-eamonn-fingleton/
I find this page exellently written and an insightful source about Japan's social state, especially the lesser known situation of rural Japan after the 20 year economic malaise.
In my point of view the discussion, although I find it very interesting, is very black and white. It reminds me a litte bit of the discussion in the bloggoshpere about the monetary outcome the industiralised world is facing in wake of the banking- and sovereign crisis, e.g. inflationary or a deflationary scenario in the coming future.
I personally tend to see the world in a more greyish tone and I am always suspicious when people try to claim that they hold the only truth in their hands.
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