Japanese Statistics

	The fraudulent "Asian Economic Crisis": 1999-2000: Bank of Tokyo down 4% to   "only" $680 billion. 2000-2001: Bank of Tokyo explodes 22% to $735 billion. Combined taxes are less than 10% of household incomes. End of 2001:  Sumitomo Bank assets increased by almost half a trillion dollars in one year. Monetary base of central bank increases $22.8 trillion in one year, from $71.5 to $94.3 trillion. Average family assets approach $1 million each Working family household incomes approach $10,000 per month Personal savings ranged between 30-34% of GDP according to several sources. $30-42 trillion in Postal Savings Accounts. Statistical compendia http://www.stat.go.jp/english/143.htm
	Average Family Receipts in 2008 = $120,740.
	Japan's life expectancy is four years longer than ours, and they spend half as much as us for health care
	Japan's incarceration rate is one twentieth of ours
	Japanese 8th graders score 105 points higher than ours in TIMSS Math
	Other statistics about Japan: UN profile of Japan. Current Japanese crime rates http://www.stat.go.jp/english/1431-23.htm World crime rates http://fathersmanifesto.net/worldcrimestats.htm

On Saturday, June 20, 1998, Kenichi Ohmae wrote the following in "Why Japan is Heading for a Major Crash":

"With this in mind, the G8 has demanded the Japanese economy be "fixed" ... and
fixed quickly at that. Without proper understanding of Japan's fundamental
problems, however, there will be further decline and, in fact, a sustained
crash of the Japanese market. This could easily bring a swift decline to the
euphoric European and US markets."

Since Kenichi wrote this, Japan's GDP did decrease, but only in 1999 and only by 0.7%.  But it increased 7.6% in 200, another 9.2% in 2001, and is headed for a 1.9% increase in 2000.  Even more significantly, Japan's savings rate of 33% didn't decrease by even one yen during this "Asian economic crisis".

Is it possible that he made such a major error, or is this evidence of the ability of the Japanese to mislead Americans?

Michael Mussa of the IMF, when he made the following statement on Tuesday, December 22, 1998, wasn't any closer to the truth than Kenichi:

Asked by reporters how the IMF could downgrade expectation for Japanese
growth despite announcements of new fiscal stimulus said to equal 4% of
GDP, IMF chief economist Michael Mussa said:

"I think the way to look at the revisions for Japan is that if we had
not had the recent policy announcements, we probably would by now have
revised down the forecast even more....The Tankan business survey was
more negative than expected. And we have, of course, also had to revise
the forecast to take into account the very sharp appreciation of the yen
that occurred in September."

This prediction by the "experts" was made just 2 years before Japan's GDP experienced an "unexpected" 7.6% increase in 2000 and an equally "unexpected" 9.2% increase in 2001.

What is it about hese "experts" that they are incapable of even being in the ball park on economic projections?