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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Steve ForbesJ
apanese prime minister Shinzo
Abe is likely to enjoy a long
reign because of fragmented
opposition. Lucky for him, because
the economic revival project called
Abenomics is on slow burn as well.
Like the so-called Sky Mile Tower
in Tokyo Bay, to be the world’s tall-
est but not to be realized until 2045,
the policies have gaping ambitions and little to show for the present.
Abe keeps loading the Bank of Japan’s board with inflationists in order to coun-
ter the contractionary bent of an aging and in some ways insular society whose
yen currency has been rising this year because global traders wanted a safe haven.
Normally you’d expect monetary looseness and huge government debt to weigh
the other way, and surely Japan’s biggest exporters much desire such exchange-rate
relief to boost sales. Yet that Abenomics growth path isn’t being cleared.
Without much growth and with government bonds paying nothing in interest,
no wonder Japan’s insurers and other institutions with long payout obligations are
stressed to make the numbers add up. The same goes for the fiscal deficit.
Meantime, significant deregulation lost the impetus of the Trans-Pacific Part-
nership when Donald Trump scotched that trade deal. Abe’s team must come up
with other ways to liberalize, including a wider opening for immigration; Japan
continues to trail even South Korea in that regard.
The country’s science and engineering prowess remains an asset. And outfits
like the Rebuild Japan Initiative Foundation are pushing a globalized conscious-
ness. But do the Japanese really have all the running room that politics have given
their premier and financial markets have allowed their out-of-whack accounts?
Japan’s precariousness is a boring old story. Until it isn’t.O
ne silver lining to the hostile rivalry that India and Pakistan have main-
tained for decades is that Pakistan’s economic growth spurt late in the last
century helped to spur India toward liberalization to get its own GDP in
gear. (The tables subsequently were turned, although Pakistan has picked back up
a bit.) But the tensions between them have done no good for mankind—least of all
in Kashmir, as the excerpt of journalist Judith Matloff ’s new book (p. 54) shows.
Her longer study looks at the role that mountainous settings play in various mod-
ern battlegrounds. In this case we see spoiled splendor and opportunities lost.High Anxiety
Tim Ferguson
Editor, forbes asia
[email protected]6 | FORBES ASIA MAY 2017
Sky Mile: Tokyo needs a lift to get to 2045.