Financial turmoil of 2008

[JerseyBoy]

USA and Europe have been hit very hard by the sub prime and other low quality investment vehicles. What's your take on the impacts on Japan? Nikkei has gone down quite a bit. It is no brainer in terms of the impacts on the stock market. But, how about the other parts of the general Japanese economy?

[Kinsao]

Well it's not a very 'economic' comment of mine, I don't know much about the economy directly, but I was reading (and deducing) that suicide rates are rising because of troubles in the economy... lots of people are feeling the pressure. :(

[Pachipro]

Astroboy I believe, posted an article from the NY Times saying that Japan will survive relatively unscathed as they have trillions in cash due to the frugal spending habits of the Japanese and their high savings rate unlike the US and perhaps Europe and the UK.

As Japan survived their own bubble crash of the housing markets in the 90's, I believe the economy will survive and continue as it always had. The Japanese have always gotten through times like this and have come out smelling good in the long run. I don't see anything different save that the carry trade is dead in the water for the time being and the Japanese yen will only continue to get stronger as it has dropped below 100/US$ today. In the past month it has dropped about 6 yen. This may hurt their exports in the short term, but they have enough factories overseas to more than make up for it in the long term.

[JerseyBoy]

A recent news article reported the rising bankruptcies in Japan, which could be a tell-tale sign of how its economy is going to be. I heard Japanese is sitting on $14 trillion savings in the postal saving vehicle. The current national debt is close to $9 trillion. So, there are a few more trillions to add on more debts. Japan's economy depends so much on exports while the key export markets may be going down. I hope there is another "lost decade" in the offing in Japan because of the current worldwide financial crisis.