Gestern Japan – Morgen Osteuropa? Anmerkungen Zu Einigen Möglichen Krisenverwerfungen und Bewältigungsstrategien (Japan and Eastern Europe – Old and New Macroeconomic Challenges : Some Remarks with Regard to the Economic and Financial Crisis)

Japan and Eastern Europe are victims, in light of special circumstances, of the disruptive forces of the global financial system, but for different reasons. Eastern Europe, which in recent years had become something of a white hope, an “emerging market”, tied itself closely to foreign lenders and practically invited them to finance the boom; Japan, on the other hand belonged to the financiers of this boom. The Carry-Trade, that wondrous spell of magic, tied the development of these regions to each other. For Eastern Europe the challenges following the collapse of the global financial system are new in the historical sense, for Japan however it is the continuation of an ill-omened development that has been haunting the country since the 1990s: deflation, of an almost chronic magnitude.The elements leading to the crisis: weak domestic consumption, speculative bubbles, zero percent interest rates and expansionary fiscal policy as a stand-in for burst stock- and real estate bubbles, already existed in the microcosm that is Japan, long before the financial crisis erupted on the global stage