An old Japanese saying has it that money is a roving commodity. It will forever keep changing hands, so that yesterday's borrowers are today's lenders, and today's impoverished will be tomorrow's affluent.
How very true. For it is a fact that in 1990, Japanese households recorded a net savings surplus of 36.2 trillion yen. By contrast the corporate sector suffered a savings shortage of some 26 trillion yen. Companies were spending beyond their means, and households were providing the necessary financing to make up the difference. And the government was sitting pretty with a net savings surplus position of 12.2 trillion yen.
Households provided the cash, the companies borrowed and spent it, and the resulting profits they generated provided the government with enough tax revenue to keep going without having to resort to debt issuance. That is how money roved around the Japanese economy just over a decade ago.