Abenomics Looks a Lot Like Reaganomics
Is Japan's team this good?
Source: Bettmann/Getty ImagesExplaining Japan’s economy to Western audiences is hard.
One big reason for this is that explaining something as large and complex as a $5 trillion economy is an inherently difficult task -- there are a lot of conflicting trends, regional differences and other wrinkles. A second reason is that Japan tends to be somewhat out of sync with the U.S. and Europe -- when the U.S. was struggling in the early 1980s, Japan was powering ahead, and when the U.S. recovered in the 1990s, Japan stagnated. A third reason is that the economic institutions that govern Japan -- the centralized but weak government; the huge, old, diversified corporations; the powerful but conflicted bureaucracy -- are just very different from those that prevail in the U.S. or European Union.