Weeks rarely get worse for world leaders than the one Shinzo Abe just had.
First, Donald Trump scrapped a trade deal essential to revitalizing Japan's economy, even after Abe scurried to New York to kiss the president-elect's ring. Vladimir Putin made clear he'd been playing Abe with hints Russia might cede some of the disputed islands off Hokkaido. Efforts to cozy up to South Korea's Park Geun-hye are kaput as impeachment beckons. New data showed Abe's much-heralded ploy to end deflation has, four years on, produced zero inflation.
But the real blow to Abenomics was a ManpowerGroup survey showing why it flopped — and how much work Tokyo must do to change the narrative. Turns out, Japan's millennials are the "least positive" about their future among the biggest economies, even trailing young Greeks by a wide margin. Fewer than 40 percent of young Japanese see a successful career ahead, while 37 percent of millennials fully expect to work until the day they die (compared with an average of 12 percent among the 18 countries in the study). By contrast, 18 percent of Chinese and 15 percent of Greeks expect to work until their last breath.