For years we have been told that Japan is a fallen giant that was crippled by the stock market crash of 1989 and has yet to recover. The new Japanese political leadership has used this story to argue for higher inflation targets that would double the money supply and national debt to get Japan out of its malaise.
This article from the New York Times makes the case that Japan is doing fine, possibly better than the US, and that the Japanese use this story of malaise to their benefit in things like trade negotiations. It seems that a good part of the confusion is based on faulty calculations of GDP.
This notion first surfaced on Mises.org in a Daily Article.
