Gil writes:>The interesting question, in light of Peter's assessment, is why the Japanese government can't use traditional Keynesian fiscal tools to pull itself out of the recession.<
1) the IMF and the assembled economic pooh-bahs argue against it. 2) they've already done it a lot, building a lot of infrastructure, much of it useless, but never enough to get the Japanese economy moving again. 3) they don't want to get into raising government consumption (building pyramids, as Keynes suggested) and they're still restricted from doing Military Keynesianism. But that doesn't mean that fiscal policy couldn't be used. My idea is that they should stimulate the Japanese economy by giving foreign aid to poor areas (such as East St. Louis, IL) that's "tied," i.e., can only be spent on Japanese goods. This is what the U.S. did for many years. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
