Get ready for a lost decade | Hacker News Reader

Get ready for a lost decade

online.wsj.com

17 pointsckinnan16 comments

My all-time favorite HN comment about this issue:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=329218

I felt a lot better after reading this.

I'd bet not, actually. The lost decade in Japan was due to unique structural problems in the Japanese economy. The current recession is just a classic speculative bubble. A bad one, certainly, but not qualitatively different from the speculative bubbles the west has been bouncing back from since the 17th century.

no denial about speculative bubble but with abysmal savings, lack of educational resources, and near certain evaporation of low skilled jobs not sure - when it bounces back to what level it can go and how sustainable bounce back will be.. fundamental problems must be acknowledged and tackled..

One similarity certainly has to be zombie companies that the government props up, to the hindrance of creative destruction.

I think the industries that are affected aren't the most innovative in the US. No zombie web companies are getting bailed out, right?

A lot of economists have been saying for a long time that overinvestment in real estate is a structural problem of the United States economy. It's sure not clear to me how buying a McMansion in a sprawling exurb increases productivity.

Fear mongering among the investor class, sweeping generalizations to prove that Obama is going to screw up. For example, he thinks giving money to banks was a good idea, but asking them to lend it is bad. I thought the whole idea of the bailout was to resolve the liquidity crisis. Without lending you still have a liquidity crisis. And the article is a little short on alternative policies.

>"he thinks giving money to banks was a good idea, but asking them to lend it is bad:

Giving banks money was to prevent further financial collapse and panic. Forcing them to lend money to people that they don't think can afford it sounds like deja vu, this time with government backing. I couldn't think of a more short-sighted policy. Talk about not learning from history, and in this case history is 2006.

Furthermore, he says:

>"Large "confidence" costs were always destined to flow from the extreme steps being taken, even if advisable, to prop up the economy. The federal government's alternating takeovers and bailouts of companies are inherently destabilizing and create massive uncertainty in investors and businesses."

One of the reasons that economists who study the matter think the Great Depression took so long to end was that the sudden, drastic, and unpredictable actions of the New Deal created uncertainty and reduced business investment. It is certainly a valid point to keep in mind with a President promising a "Green New Deal" and a "New New Deal".

Obama hasn't got in office yet, but his stated ideology is certainly troubling to me.

"For example, he thinks giving money to banks was a good idea, but asking them to lend it is bad."

What part of the article gives you that idea?

Ugh. Is this really the WSJ? I thought they used to only print stuff like this in the anonymous opinion columns.

WSJ saw a huge drop in quality since Murdoch bought the paper. My guess is that he is trying to change WSJ to appeal to a lower common denominator to increase subscriptions.

I got the print edition for 6 months or so after he bought it, the primary news gathering was still awesome. The op-ed page has sucked since Bush got in office.

It says at the top "Wall Street Journal. Opinion Journal"

It has no byline. At the bottom it says "Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum."

Not sure how much more they could do to tell folks that this is an editorial. Seems like this misconception happens a lot, though. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=381821

It does have a byline and a dot-picture of the author, to the right of the title: "By HOLMAN W. JENKINS, JR."

So by the conventions of newspaper editorial pages, it is the opinion of the author, not the opinion of "the paper". (It is still generally the sort of opinion the WSJ has always favored.)

He works for "The Paper", though:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holman_W._Jenkins_Jr

They wouldn't print it if they didn't like it. Plus as said by another, he is on the editorial board.

We've already lost one decade. Why not another?

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