Posted on 01/22/2010 4:54:27 AM PST by TigerLikesRooster
Japan's Economic Death Accelerates As Retail Sales Nose-Dive Back to 1980s Levels
Vincent Fernando | Jan. 22, 2010, 6:20 AM | 229 | comment
Japan's retail industry is getting destroyed from the persistent lack of consumer demand.
Latest data shows that retail sales have kept falling like a rock, touching levels not seen since the late 1980s.
AP:
Department stores and supermarkets were hit hard by the recession with department store sales falling below 7 trillion yen for the first time since 1985 while supermarket sales dropping below 13 trillion yen for the first time since 1988, data released by industry groups showed Friday.
On a same-store basis, both department store and supermarket sales fell for the 13th consecutive year, showing no sign of touching bottom in the face of declining personal consumption amid the economic slump.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Ping!
Is that a sign of deflation?
Maybe they’ve decided they’d rather have money than overpriced and ultimately worthless consumer goods and trendy fashions.
I guess if we stop being robo-consumers, the rest of the world has major problems. Especially true for the Asian countries that supply our addiction (er....export to us).
When a condo mortgage in Tokyo 3 enslaves generations, that leaves no room for economic cycles, yet, it binds discretionary spending in the down parts.....China as taken over Japan's manufacturing base because of above mentioned (cheaper labor).
I personally know of 3 business ventures in China that have gone sour for a large Japanese corporation...hundreds of millions.
Te Chinese are taking vengeance upon Japan because of WWII and the history with such as The Rape of Nanking.
The Japanese are also saddled with large payments to government public works construction bonds.
It probably doesn’t help that a quarter of Japan’s population is over 65 and that the fertility rate is below replacement level.
I find the drop in food store sales interesting. Since Japan has an aging population I wonder how much of this drop is related to that?
Couple that with a significantly reduced manufacturing base for consumables and necessities such as clothing, furniture, tools, appliances, electronics, etc., we're f'd by all the 'free trade'.
Of course this is by design by those that are and have been running the goobermint as cheaper imported goods means (in their minds) more discretionary spending dollars for the goobermint to take to feed their ever growing machine......train wreck ahead.
I think that is the cruz of the problem. The U.S. is headed toward the same problem with the just-beginning retirement of the Baby Boom Generation.
Well, if nobody’s buying, the price will fall or the supply will dry up, barring some form of subsidy.
Bump.
I wonder if Republicans will fall for the Bush/Hastert/Lott ‘grow our way( by any means )’ trick again? Before the Obama budget, Bush and the mostly Republican controlled Congress doubled our entire debt. Obama has doubled it again.
We are in the best of hands. /sarc.
Oh, also, the Japan turn around, I belive, there was a wiz kid involved named.....Timothy Geithner.
You can go to a hundred once productive cities in the North East, mid west that’s productive, white, taxpaying population has been replaced with a low educated, high drop out from free schools, no to low tax paying, high welfare and government money consuming immigrant population.
Soon, it will be entire states. Detroit is the model for most old urban cities.
Even political hubs like Albany have something like ten thousand abandoned homes.
The U.S. fertility rate is hovering around replacement level (2.1). However, with a welfare state that promotes permiscuity I am forced to wonder if the demographics of that fertility rate are conducive to maintaining a free society.
The technique was employed to allow goobermint to grow itself, to gain more power and control....unfortunately one thing has come to pass on a national & global basis that has screwed the pooch with that tactic.
That is too many variables because of the nature of mankind: Greed and Pride and that knows no color or one language.
IOW, socialism, again, doesn’t work. Well seems like a homogeneous cultural race like-minded fiscal snafu to the first degree.
I just read Greenspan’s book. Shocking. The guy is basically a talented clerk, but otherwise a dolt. Benanke has deer in the head lights look about him.
It is all resting, all of it, the entire world on those paper dollars.
I sniff Wiemar Republic times, times the whole world coming.
We have just entered the beginning of the beginning of the death of world wide fiat paper money.
The majority of people do not realize 'The Agenda' and who all is behind it and what their goal is.....we just see bits and pieces of it like in the ObammaCare bill, Climategate, and the Crap & Tax attempt.
Seeing who all are members of the CFR, TLC, Wall Street Bank CEO's (some now on The Fed, Sec of the Treasury) etc. and much more is a real eye-opener.
Call me nuts, but if one looks hard enough and draws a few time lines, it is all conspired for us all average folk to be economic slaves for the elite and their whims.
Do not misunderstand me....I admire people who become honest self-made millionaires and retain their integrity.....it's the other 95% that run the show are the problem.
Yep.
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