Japan sinks into fresh recession (Europe also in recession, can the US be far behind?)

[HiPointDem]

Japan slipped into a technical recession in the six months to September, strengthening opposition leader Shinzo Abe’s case for more fiscal stimulus and “unlimited” monetary easing to boost growth in the world’s third-largest economy.

Final quarter gross domestic product data on Monday showed that output slipped 0.9 per cent in the three months to September, in line with earlier estimates. However, the government revised down the previous quarter’s estimate to an annualised 0.1 per cent contraction, matching the textbook definition of a technical recession. It would be Japan’s fifth in the past 15 years.

The weak data will come as a blow to Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, whose Democratic Party of Japan is seeking to remain the biggest in the lower house after nationwide elections on December 16. Mr Abe, leader of the Liberal Democratic party, which is tipped to win an absolute majority, has repeatedly attacked ruling politicians and monetary policy makers for failing to stir demand in an economy that has shrunk in three of the past four years.

The revision to the official estimate of April-June GDP growth to a shade below zero offers little new information about the near-term prospects for the world’s third-largest economy. Japan’s GDP data are frequently substantially revised in the quarters after they are initially announced and many economists have already forecast that the economy will contract again in the current quarter.

But the revision highlights the difficulty Japan is having in establishing sustained growth after the brutal downturn into which it plunged following the 2008 global financial crisis and the huge earthquake and tsunami that hit the nation’s northeast coast in March 2011.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/dd3dd156-4278-11e2-979e-00144feabdc0.html#axzz2EdlLFEzt


The world will stay in a negative to flat growth/austerity pattern until the malefactors of great wealth have stolen enough from the people to reinflate their own bubbly portfolios. Most of us will be poorer but the super-rich will be much richer.

[Tempest]

1. We'll be close behind if Republicans have their way

Europe is in another recession because their austerity budgets strangled spending and their economies never had a chance to take off.

It's the same thing Republicans want to do here.