I had seen the future... In Japan!

In the early nineties, I traveled a lot to Japan and never failed to marvel at that country's advance in so many fields, including of course consumer products and technology. I would always tell my family and friends “If you want to catch a glimpse of the future, visit Japan!” Unbeknown to me, that assertion was already unraveling as Japan was in the process of losing its luster in the early stage of its post “bubble” era.

But there was no question that, until the mid-nineties, the land of the rising sun was a peep-hole in which the future could be seen with all of its luster. Today, after a twenty year struggle and a variety of unsuccessful stimuli, Japan still can't seem to regain its footing.

From there, it's very easy to draw a parallel with what's currently happening in the USA and what soon might affect Europe. A situation in which a country runs out of room for keeping on expending or even worse, being totally unable to return to growth and “normal” consumption, which begs the question as to whether that consumption was healthy and sustainable to begin with. The more I dwell on the subject, the most our economic system appears to be a deliberately built-in house of cards which, by design, can't sustain itself. That of course, is fodder for yet another economic discussion...