. . . The infrastructure spending that other nations hope will be a silver bullet is a cautionary tale in a country dotted with such construction projects that never lived up to expectations of lifting the economy during the downturn of the 1990s. Now Japan is back in recession. This time, there is scant enthusiasm in the world's second-largest economy for going into debt building roads, bridges and other massive projects . . . The thinking before was that big construction projects would create jobs, encourage travel and stimulate domestic consumption. Instead, the economic benefit was minimal, and municipalities --...
