Andy Xie: What We Can Learn as Japan's Economy Sinks
09-16 08:56 Caijing  comments( 16 )

Japan hasn't sustained growth bounces for decades, nor will it under the DPJ government. Therein lie lessons for other economies.

By Andy Xie, guest economist to Caijing and a board member of Rosetta Stone Advisors Ltd.

(Caijing Magazine) Japan has had a political earthquake. The Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that ruled Japan since the end of the World War II lost most of its seats in the latest election, while the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won 308 of 480 lower house seats, complementing its majority in the upper house.

Now, DPJ is in a strong position to undertake structural reforms. Indeed, a big political change brings hope in any country that's stagnated for as long as Japan. However, DPJ is unlikely to turn around Japan's economy anytime soon. LDP, in the name of Keynesian stimulus, spent all its money over the past decade on wasteful investments, leaving DPJ with no resources for reform. I'm afraid DPJ has an impossible situation on its hands.

Anyone who doesn't believe in the harm of a financial bubble but does believe in Keynesian stimulus magic should visit Japan. A likely dip for the Anglo-Saxon economies next year will underscore these truths. The same goes for anyone who thinks China's latest real estate bubble, asset borrowing and shadow banking system are worthwhile substitutes for real economic growth.

The world including China can learn a lot by looking at what's happened to Japan, and what's in store for DPJ. Since Japan's stock market bubble burst in 1989 and the land market popped in 1992, the LDP government has run up debt equal to nearly 200 percent GDP in hopes of reviving the economy. And its economy has stagnated.

The burst of the global credit bubble in 2008 brought down Japan's export machine. That was its only hope. Now, of all OECD economies, Japan's looks most like a depression. Its nominal GDP declined 8 percent in the first quarter 2009 from the year before. Although its economy rebounded a bit in the second quarter, nominal GDP for 2009 is still expected to decline substantially and will likely be lower than in 1993.

Many analysts blame Japan's problems on corporate inefficiency. This is partly true. Japan has had a hyper-competitive export sector. Domestic, demand-oriented industries are inefficient due to labor market practices. More importantly, sectors that became massively levered during the bubble years have been walking like zombies for two decades, weighing down the economy's overall efficiency. Japan's inefficiencies are largely a consequence of its decision to prop these industries.

U.S. return on asset (ROA) was twice as high as that in Japan. But, in hindsight, higher ROA in the United States was mostly a bubble phenomenon. Much of U.S. corporate profitability was due to financial engineering. In one aspect, the export performance of Japan's corporate sector has done very well -- much better than its U.S. counterpart. Japan's exports doubled in yen terms between 1993 and 2008, and the sector's share of GDP nearly doubled to 16 percent from 9 percent, even though the yen remained strong during the period. The performance of Japan's export sector shows its inefficiencies elsewhere were largely due to shortcomings in the system.

Japan's stagnation has been linked to government handling of debt overhang in the corporate sector -- mainly in the real estate, construction, and retail sectors, and left over from the bubble era. In the 1980s, especially after the Plaza Accord, Japan's corporate sector accumulated a massive amount of debt for financial speculation. Total corporate debt more than doubled to about 900 trillion yen, or 200 percent of GDP, from 1984-'92. After land and stock prices collapsed, the net value of the corporate sector's financial assets switched from about 30 percent of GDP to a minus 50 percent of GDP. If the change in land holding value is included, the corporate sector's net worth may have fallen by 200 percent of GDP. As corporate profits are about 10 percent of GDP in a developed economy, Japan's corporate sector would need two decades to earn its way back.

The Japanese government did choose to let the corporate sector earn its way back, first by preventing bankruptcies and second by stimulating demand. To achieve the first goal, the government kept interest rates near zero and Japanese banks did not pursue mark-to-market accounting in assessing borrower solvency. With a big chunk of the corporate sector zombie-like, the economy, of course, was always facing downward pressure. The government had to run large fiscal deficits to prop up the economy. After the bubble, Japan's economic equilibrium stagnated and the fiscal deficit swelled.

This strategy was flawed in three aspects. First, even as the corporate sector earns profits to pay down debt, the government's debt is rising. At best, it is shifting corporate debt to government debt