Kyoto Report No 8

This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life in Kyoto for a westerner in the age of Covid. I know I said last week’s Report would be the last but I have a couple of more observations in the days that followed. So here we are again for the last report for this year. I will continue the series when I return to Kyoto in 2023.

Read more

Kyoto Report No 7

This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life in Kyoto for a westerner in the age of Covid. This will be my last report as I am returning to Australia at the end of this week. I will return to my work in Japan in 2023 but now have commitments back in Australia. Today, we visit some temples, gardens and textile centres.

Read more

Kyoto Report No 6

This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life in Kyoto for a westerner in the age of Covid. Temples, visitors, grammar and more temples interrupted by a astronomic event. A week in Kyoto.

Read more

Kyoto Report No 4

This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life in Kyoto for a westerner in the age of Covid. Today it is report on an OTT (good way) historical procession in Kyoto to mark 1,100 years since the capital was established in this city. And some more action from the hills to the east of Kyoto, where the most magnificent gardens can be found. As well as some other things.

Read more

Degrowth, deep adaptation, and skills shortages – Part 4

One of the ‘problems’ besetting the world at present, if the commentary in the mainstream press is anything to go by, is the existence of chronic skill shortages. Survey studies of the shifting demographics in Japan, for example, have produced ‘alarming’ results from a mainstream perspective. See for example, this OECD Report from 2021 – Changing skill needs in the Japanese labour market. I was at a meeting recently in Kyoto and it is clear that many firms in Japan are having trouble finding workers and many have even offered wage increases to lure workers to their companies. Further, many small and medium-size businesses are owned by persons who are over 70 years of age and that proportion is rising fast. The skill shortage scenario is tied in with the ageing society debate, where advanced nations are facing so-called demographic ‘time bombs’, with fewer people of working age left to produce for an increasing number of people who no longer work. The mainstream narrative paints these trends as major problems that have to be confronted by governments, and, typically, because of faulty understandings of the fiscal capacities of governments, propose deeply flawed solutions. I see these challenges in a very different light. Rather than construct the difficulties that firms might be facing attracting sufficient labour (the ‘skills shortages’ narrative), I prefer to see the situation as providing an indicator of the limits of economic activity or the space that nations have to implement a fairly immediate degrowth strategy. In the following two blog posts I will explain how this inversion of logic can become a crucial plank in the degrowth debate.

Read more

Kyoto Report No. 2

This Tuesday report will provide some insights into life in Kyoto for a westerner in the age of Covid. Today, I report on stone fords across rivers, bears, monkeys, and more. All the before and after work action from Kyoto.

Read more

British currency gyrations are about weak government not fiscal deficits

The British government has descended into high farce. It is rather embarassing to watch adults behave in the way they have conducted themselves in the last longtime. I also note that the usual suspects are out in force claiming (spuriously) that the economic turmoil that has beset Britain demonstrates categorically that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is deeply flawed and the real world is now teaching us that we should be discarded into the dustbin of history – or rather disgrace. These characters, which include so-called progressives think that hard core fiscal rules, like the British Labour Party took into the last election would have saved the day for Britain. I guess they are now mates with the IMF, who in their latest fiscal monitor – Fiscal Monitor – overnight (published October 12, 2022) – called for fiscal restraint. Also, central bankers who met in Washington over the last few days decided they had become the elected and accountable government making gratuitous threats that if fiscal policy wasn’t turned to austerity, they would punish citizens with further interest rate hikes. It is actually hard to find anything of sense in the current economic debate. It is despairing really.

Read more

Zero trading in 10-year Japanese government bonds signals Bank of Japan supremacy

On July 21, 2022, the Bank of Japan issued this – Statement on Monetary Policy – which outlined that it would continue to use its capacities to implement ‘Yield curve control’, whereby the “Bank will apply a negative interest rate of minus 0.1 percent to the Policy-Rate Balances in current accounts held by financial institutions at the Bank” and “will purchase a necessary amount of Japanese government bonds (JGBs) without setting an upper limit so that 10-year JGB yields will remain at around zero percent”. Further, the Statement noted that “the Bank will offer to purchase 10-year JGBs at 0.25 percent every business day through fixed-rate purchase operations, unless it is highly likely that no bids will be submitted”. The only dissenter on an 8 to 1 vote, wanted even more easing of monetary policy! The BOJ has been implementing its yield curve control since March 2021. In the light of global trends in central banking, the Bank of Japan’s decisions are a standout and show how a sophisticated understanding of the monetary economy coupled with a desire by the Government to improve the lives of ordinary citizens expose the fictions of mainstream economics, which dominates policy making elsewhere.

Read more
Back To Top