This is the funniest shit I have seen in years. The juxtaposition of cute bunnies with a series of horrific actions is so unsettling that all you can do is laugh really hard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr4QBZfjtqs

Forget about looking for a job; you won’t find it. Just find a husband to marry. That’s what the Japanese women are doing apparently. Well, it’s not just in Japan (and it’s not just for women either); marriage is certainly a good way to save money and to hedge your financial risk. This is especially true if you live in a city like Tokyo and New York where the cost of living is high. Now you can’t get divorced even if you wanted to (especially if you have kids). Whether we like it or not, this recession is bringing everyone together and closer.

This article by Martin Wolf does a nice job of comparing Japan’s “Lost Decade” to the current recsssion in the US. He says:

…those who argue that the Japanese government’s fiscal expansion failed are, again, mistaken. … Despite a loss in wealth of three times GDP and a shift of 20 per cent of GDP in the financial balance of the corporate sector, from deficits into surpluses, Japan did not suffer a depression. This was a triumph.

Interesting; I’ve never thought of it that way. I guess it’s true.

This is a convincing article about why the US could never nationalize their big banks. Even though the article does not talk about derivatives, unlike the Japanese banks, the American banks are too inter-connected with instruments like Credit Default Swaps (CDS). Nationalization will probably trigger CDS contracts, and there will be a domino effect of failures. This means the US government is cornered; every solution seems to have serious side effects. Their hands are tied.

The rest of the world (especially Japan) will have to come up with a fundamentally different business model from what they had before which was to feed the seemingly bottomless demand of the US consumers. Any nation counting on the US to lead them out of the recession would be the last to get out of it.

Here are some bullish comments about China. I happen to think that China would be the first to recover, because they have massive savings; so, they could spend away on stimulus without worrying about the inflation getting out of control. And, they have no banking crisis. Unlike the US, the financial sector is healthy and is ready to support the stimulus.

Hopefully, China would be able to lift Japan and Korea out of the recession too. But Japan is in a really bad shape, so the order of recovery would probably be: China, Korea, and then Japan.

Martin Wolf (the British economist) says:

“If Mr Geithner or Lawrence Summers, head of the national economic council, were advising the US as a foreign country, they would point this out, brutally.”

“The correct advice remains the one the US gave the Japanese and others during the 1990s: admit reality, restructure banks and, above all, slay zombie institutions at once.”

This is my perspective exactly. The Americans are blind because their own pain (or fear of pain) is distorting their view of the reality.

This is a good article that illustrates how strikingly similar this financial crisis is to Japan’s Lost Decade. If Obama fails to do the right thing now, he is going to be in big trouble in several years, because everyone will dig up this type of articles, and say that he didn’t listen to the abundant warnings, just as we are now hearing from many people who warned us about Bernie Madoff. In hindsight, Obama will look like Christopher Cox, the SEC chairman.