During my latest fencing travels, this time to Columbus, Ohio (“Gateway to Cleveland”), I saw a sign for a company I had never heard of before:
L’Chaim
Slope of Hope Blog Posts
Slope initially began as a blog, so this is where most of the website’s content resides. Here we have tens of thousands of posts dating back over a decade. These are listed in reverse chronological order. Click on any category icon below to see posts tagged with that particular subject, or click on a word in the category cloud on the right side of the screen for more specific choices.
Japanese Reflection (3 of 4)
I’ve been pleasantly surprised that some of my most popular posts are excerpts from the only history book I ever wrote, Panic, Prosperity, and Progress. Over this holiday weekend, I’ll be sharing, over the course of four days, the chapter dedicated to the inflation and bursting of the Japanese bubble of the 1980s. I think you’ll find some interesting parallels with China. You can read the first part here and second part here.
Japan’s economic growth did not, of course, go unnoticed by its stock market. The Nikkei 225 index, which stood at a price level of 1929 on May 31, 1970, grew steadily to 5359 by January 31 of 1973, an expansion of 177%. By August 31, 1981, the Nikkei stood at 8019, a growth of about 315% from the 1970 level. As tremendous as those returns are, looking at the long-term chart of the Nikkei, the growth was relatively steady and, in light of the bubble to come, quite muted.
(more…)Japanese Reflection (2 of 4)
I’ve been pleasantly surprised that some of my most popular posts are excerpts from the only history book I ever wrote, Panic, Prosperity, and Progress. Over this holiday weekend, I’ll be sharing, over the course of four days, the chapter dedicated to the inflation and bursting of the Japanese bubble of the 1980s. I think you’ll find some interesting parallels with China. You can read the first part here.
In the early 1950s, Japan focused on what it called “priority production”, which meant a focus on basics such as coal mining, steel production, and shipbuilding. It was creating a solid foundation for the widespread industrialization that would come years later, and it helped move the country away from its former focus on farming. In the modern world, becoming proficient at industries such as steel would be more valuable than another marginal increase in rice output.
(more…)Japanese Reflection (1 of 4)
I’ve been pleasantly surprised that some of my most popular posts are excerpts from the only history book I ever wrote, Panic, Prosperity, and Progress. Over this holiday weekend, I’ll be sharing, over the course of four days, the chapter dedicated to the inflation and bursting of the Japanese bubble of the 1980s. I think you’ll find some interesting parallels with China.
As the summer came to a close in 1945, Japan lay in ruins. It had spent the past five years at war, and the nation had been assaulted by an unrelenting fire-bombing campaign, climaxed, of course, by the only two nuclear weapons ever dropped on humans in world history. Japan, once with dreams of Pacific-wide domination, was now one of the poorest and most-devastated nations on Earth.
(more…)The It-Didn’t-Happen Rally
When I was a little kid and got what I considered a bad grade (let’s say a B+) at school, I would sheepishly come home and start to tell my mom. She could tell I had disappointing news, and she would invariably ask me, “Was it a C? A D? An F?” Hearing her offer some low expectations was a relief for me, and it made me easier to tell her, “I got a B+”, and she would tell me it wasn’t so bad, and we would talk about it. For a little boy, it was a weight off his shoulders. And she did it that way every time.
I suppose, or at least I hope, it was her way of making it easier for me to tell her the news. Thus, in a strange way, telling her something bad was magically transformed into what I felt was actually pretty good news. Hearing her suggest that I might be reporting an “F” but instead giving her a “B+” made me feel good again. It was a curious, but clever, psychological trick.
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