When James Carville, a political consultant to Bill Clinton, coined the phrase "It's the economy, stupid" for the candidate's 1992 presidential campaign, little did he know that he was speaking for the general election in Japan in 2009 as well.
The closest Japanese equivalent to "doom and gloom" is kurai mitoshi, literally "dark prospects." Well, you don't have to be stupid to realize that the prospects for the Japanese economy in 2009 are very dark indeed.
Economics is often called "the dismal science." Dismal it definitely is. But a science, no. Were it a science, its precepts and paradigms would be relevant to and applicable in every society in the world. In fact, people's behavior, attitudes and the solutions they opt for to deal with problems depend more on their culture — with its traditions, values and constraints — than on anything else.