We live today in a world of information and communications technology. For all the wonders it can work, it is actually quite fragile, dependent on a whole host of things to ensure it operates smoothly. One of those things is batteries. However brainy and ...

“Welcome to the real world,” says Morpheus, captain of the hovercraft Nebuchadnezzar. That is how the cult-movie serial “Matrix” first ventured out into its progressively surreal world. Fans avidly await the coming of the third and (supposedly) last installment of the saga later this ...

Summer is as much the silly season in Japan as well as elsewhere. Nothing much moves forward and the papers struggle to find suitable topics to comment on. So do economists. Here are some thoughts for the season. There are people who think Alan ...

Fewer subsidies, less transfers, more taxing power. Thus goes Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s “trinity” of local government reforms. According to Mr. Koizumi’s proposals, subsidies paid out of the central government’s coffers to fund local community projects will be slashed by around 4 trillion yen ...

Stability is a good thing. But you can always have too much of a good thing. Too much stability turns into rigidity. Rigidity begets stagnation. Stagnation leads to decline. Decline leads to death. Such is the dynamics of economic activity. It was in the ...

“Wonderful thing, death. So uncontroversial,” said Jim Hacker, the hero of BBC TV’s highly successful 1980s political sitcom “Yes Prime Minister.” The irreverently honest remark was made on the eve of the state funeral of Hacker’s predecessor as U.K. prime minister. Had he been ...

Friendly fire is a terrible thing to be a casualty of. But such things happen in the battlefield. As has indeed been happening in the Iraqi war zone. It can also happen in the world of economics. Even between parties who are not presently ...

So now we know. After much speculation, leaking and hearsay, the next governor of the Bank of Japan has been named. Toshihiko Fukui it is, to the surprise and dismay of many it seems, judging by immediate media reactions here and elsewhere. The dismayed ...

America borrows to keep growing. China grows to keep standing still. And Japan stands still to keep from falling apart. America needs to import goods from abroad to satisfy the ever insatiable appetite of its consumers, its companies, and increasingly, its military. To pay ...

An economy is like a balloon. Pump hot air into it and it will soar up into the heavens. If it soars too high for too long, it eventually gets worn or torn, or both, and starts to collapse. A soaring balloon is not ...

The hammier the act, the better it gets. Nippon Ham, Japan’s largest ham and sausage processor, tries to tap the government’s post-BSE meat buyback program by pretending it has a lot of unsold domestic beef on hand, which actually turns out to be imported ...

“A cat has four legs. My dog has four legs. Therefore my dog is a cat.” False logic cannot get much better than this. False logic is music to the ear of those who wish to be deceived and honey on the tongues of ...