Tag Archives: Japan

After eight extensive posts about the Ontario electricity sector, I am expanding my geographic coverage to look at the electricity sectors in selected OECD countries. My focus will be on the historical and relative performance of each country’s sector with respect to decarbonization and prices. As in the case of Ontario, whole volumes could and have been written about each of these countries, and the electricity sector in general, including with respect to current and future reliability...

Spoiler: MMT-informed fiscal policy. The WeekThe 1 economic experiment Shinzo Abe won't try Jeff Spross

This is the final part of a two-part discussion about the consequences of a currency-issuing government exercising different bond-issuing options. The basic Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) position is for the currency-issuing government to abandon the unnecessary practice of issuing debt (which is a hangover from the fixed exchange rate, gold standard days). Currency-issuing governments should use that capacity to advance general well-being and providing corporate welfare to underpin and...

During my recent trip to Japan, where I made several presentations to various groups, including a large gathering in the Japanese Diet (Parliament), I received a lot of press interest, which is a good sign. I am slowly putting together the translated versions of some of the print media articles. Today, I provide a translation (with my annotations) of an interview I did with the centre-left newspaper – Asahi Shimbun – on November 6, 2019 in Tokyo. This is a daily newspaper and is one of the...

The latest South American progressive government to be taken over by right-wing thugs sponsored by the US is Bolivia. This comes just after the ousted President Evo Morales cancelled a 2018 contract with a German company to mine the nation’s lithium deposits. He was reported to have said:Bolivia’s lithium belongs to the Bolivian people … Not to multinational corporate cabals.... Bill Mitchell – billy blogJapan announces a stimulus as the Right take over BoliviaBill Mitchell | Professor in...

Bill's 4 part series on Japan.Bill Mitchell – billy blogQ&A Japan style – Part 1Q&A Japan style – Part 2Q&A Japan style – Part 3Some reflections on my time in Japan while I am too busy to writeQ&A Japan style – Part 4 Bill Mitchell | Professor in Economics and Director of the Centre of Full Employment and Equity (CofFEE), at University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia

This is the first part of a three-part series this week, where I provide some guidance on some key questions about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) that various parties in Japan have raised with me. The public discussion about MMT in Japan is relatively advanced (compared to elsewhere). Questions are asked about it and answered in the Japanese Diet (Parliament) and senior economics officials in the central bank and government make comments about it. And political activists across the political...

Influential pundits have argued that under the current situation there is no need for the government to worry about fiscal sustainability. They have found support in the proponents of so-called modern monetary theory, who have cited Japan as real-world proof of their heterodox doctrine. Even some mainstream economists, including Olivier Blanchard, have advocated for fiscal activism in Japan and argued against the consumption tax hike. An important basis of their argument is the absence of...

Later this week I will be in Japan for a series of presentations and meetings with a broad spectrum of Japanese politics. The various hosts of the events which I will confirm in Wednesday’s blog post are all committed to advancing an MMT understanding in Japan and ending the hold that ‘sound finance’ has on the public policy debates and regularly lead to poorly contrived policy shifts (such as the recent sales tax hike) in pursuit of lower fiscal deficits. As part of my preparation for my...

A little bit of a different blog post format today. I mentioned in this blog post – Apparently core MMT idea is now supported by the mainstream (October 16, 2019) – that the Japanese government had taken issued a statement, by way of a formal answer to a series of questions from Japanese CDR politician Kazuma Nakatani on the opening day of the new Parliament (October 4, 2019). The Japanese government reply was not available in full at the time I wrote that but it was reported in the Japanese...