Does post-1990s Japan show us what is now going to happen in the United States and the euro zone?
Since the big financial and banking crisis in Japan in the 1990s, Japan's economy has been characterised by: A significant skewing of income distribution against employees and a considerable increase in corporate earnings; Household and corporate deleveraging; A permanent fiscal deficit, which consequently has offset the weak household demand and by a considerable rise in the public debt ratio; An increasingly expansionary monetary policy to enable a very high public debt ratio, to the point where the central bank has switched to a long-term interest rate target of 0%; A large part of the burden of the crisis borne by households and the government. The problems related to this development in the Japanese economy are well known: the replacement of household demand by public spending is inefficient; savings (excess corporate savings) are misused (they finance fiscal deficits) and their return is zero; monetary policy is doomed to remain irreversibly expansionary. Will we see the same development in the United States and in the euro zone after the COVID crisis? A major difference from Japan could be income distribution: public opinion is probably not prepared to accept an even greater skewing of income distribution against wage earners. In Japan after the crisis, the burden of the crisis was borne by households and the government, not by companies; will the same happen in the United States and the euro zone, which would effectively imply a n income distribution that is even more negative for employees after the crisis?