Prominent economist Yukio Noguchi is one of the few who correctly predicted the collapse of Japan's bubble economy in 1987, warning the preceding euphoria was based on a major distortion in land prices.
Now the doomsday prophet is making another terrifying prediction: Japan is likely to be devastated by a snowballing public debt that will bankrupt its government and trigger catastrophic hyperinflation.
"There is little hope," Noguchi said in an interview with The Japan Times at Waseda University's Graduate School of Finance in Tokyo. "Japan's fiscal conditions are so bad, it can no longer be fixed without causing inflation. I'm very pessimistic."