Japan and restructuring
An article at Slate includes discussion of why the Japanese economy is screwed up.
I'd like to point out, because it's extraordinary, that Japan is an issue on which I largely agree with Paul Krugman. If they want to pull their economy out of its funk, they have to let go of the notion (all too current even in the United States) that for a company to go out of business is something society should prevent at all costs, and the Bank of Japan should be irresponsibly reflationary. A point I've not seen made by anyone but me is that it may be that the Japanese honestly do prefer their funk to the medicine that would be required to relieve them of it. (The reason this is less likely to happen to the United States than to Japan is that we haven't quite the cultural attachment to stability that Japan does.) It does hurt the United States economy for Japan not to fix its economy, but on a certain level, if that's their choice, it's largely their business.
