Media projections showed Abe's Liberal Democratic Party and its junior partner, the Komeito party, on track to win more than 317 seats in the 475-member lower house, enough to maintain its "super-majority" that smoothes parliamentary business.

Market analysts said the outcome would be positive for shares and negative for the yen.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/14/us-japan-election-idUSKBN0JR0N920141214

The sooner we stop playing monopoly the better. I think the Japanese people need a bit of poverty to recover their souls and find new purpose. Too many walk around like zombies during the day only finding moments of happiness during the weekends. I truly love the people of Japan, but their is far too much pressure on them to fit into a tiny mold and keep a stagnant routine and it is simply not healthy for the mind or body. Don't get me wrong, it is a world problem that is being worsened by governments that are doing all in their power to revert to old models without unions and without power of the people, but it seems much more set and prevalent here.

That being said, there is a wiff of optimism and renewed spirit brewing in the youth, and the hippies of the 60's are still here living long lifes and bringing back their banners. Reminds me of the US in the early 90's. Still a battle back there, and many of our hippy granny's have checked out, but many of us are stubborn in the face of dickism, if we are good for nothing else we will continue this legacy till whatever ends.

Krugman's views are retarded. Western Universities have been a font of Keynesian and neo-Keynesian indoctrination for decades now. Whatever that idiot says, the debt does matter.

Japan is going down the plughole. They have a shrinking workforce, a shrinking tax-base, a rising elderly population that are net-spenders of Government revenue and a ridiculously high Government debt:GDP ratio. On top of that, they are governed by psychopaths intent on inflicting a 2%-at-any-cost-inflation strategy where the costs that inflicts are rising costs for their citizens on top of all those taxes he's now paying. The export benefits of yen devaluation are not materialising because their large manufacturers have relocated production to cheaper countries already.

Okay I think we deserve at least one example of what you're talking about for alternative remedies. I mean you're dismissing a Nobel Prize winner and decades of established and accepted theory. Personally, I am very curious and don't ask merely to tell you that you're wrong, I am always looking for ideas out of the mainstream, but always end up back at Keynes or Hayek or some such familiar place.

How else do you prime a pump? Austerity has not worked. Should we try magic?

Others have more moderate opinions on Japan. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/opinion/paul-krugman-apologizing-to-japan.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&_r=0

EXCERPT: The point, however, is that the West has, in fact, fallen into a slump similar to Japan’s — but worse. And that wasn’t supposed to happen. In the 1990s, we assumed that if the United States or Western Europe found themselves facing anything like Japan’s problems, we would respond much more effectively than the Japanese had. But we didn’t, even though we had Japan’s experience to guide us. On the contrary, Western policies since 2008 have been so inadequate if not actively counterproductive that Japan’s failings seem minor in comparison. And Western workers have experienced a level of suffering that Japan has managed to avoid.

What policy failures am I talking about? Start with government spending. Everyone knows that in the early 1990s Japan tried to boost its economy with a surge in public investment; it’s less well-known that public investment fell rapidly after 1996 even as the government raised taxes, undermining progress toward recovery. This was a big mistake, but it pales by comparison with Europe’s hugely destructive austerity policies, or the collapse in infrastructure spending in the United States after 2010. Japanese fiscal policy didn’t do enough to help growth; Western fiscal policy actively destroyed growth.

Or consider monetary policy. The Bank of Japan, Japan’s equivalent of the Federal Reserve, has received a lot of criticism for reacting too slowly to the slide into deflation, and then for being too eager to raise interest rates at the first hint of recovery. That criticism is fair, but Japan’s central bank never did anything as wrongheaded as the European Central Bank’s decision to raise rates in 2011, helping to send Europe back into recession

Japan's massive Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) is working on plans to raise the amount of its assets invested in domestic stocks to about 25%, the Nikkei reported Saturday. Current investment guidelines for the GPIF -- said to be the world's largest public pension fund -- call for an allocation of 6%-18% for Japanese stocks, with the weighting at 17% as of the end of June, the report said. "The new standard will likely be about 25%, putting the upper limit at around 30%," while the allocation for government bonds will fall to around 40% from 60% currently.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japan-government-pension-fund-to-buy-more-stocks-report-2014-10-19?link=MW_home_latest_news

I prefer don't eat food from Japan. They are dangerous. After a few years, ills related nuclear will be showed.

Hard to upset you but Fukushima have nothing to do with it.

actually it does

Abenomics and bad demographics - but I think the bad demographics were driven by adverse incentives resulting from zombie banks, QE and ZIRP. To put it bluntly who would want to bring children into a world of intergenerational mortgages and debt slavery?

Japan is done - fukushima killed it

Energy costs are 9.1% higher YoY, TVs +8.0%, and Food +4.1%

Life is good.