It is a huge mistake to call the repeating cycle of boom and bust a business cycle. That name implies the bust is the failure of markets and capitalism. But it is really due to monetary and credit inflation licensed and promoted by governments and central banks.
The $120,000 price tag on that artwork involving a banana taped to a wall had almost zero to do with the amount of labor or materials that went into it. Its value was based on subjective valuations specific to certain buyers.
Despite its supposedly strained relationship with the Saudi regime, the Obama administration, for example, still managed to offer the royals of that kingdom a record $136 billion in US weapons between 2009 and 2017.
The true lesson from Japan is that central planners prefer to gradually nationalize the economy before even considering a moderate reduction in government size and control.
Far from being the saviors of society, the new breed of anti-market conservatives are merely the newest iteration of the long line of anti-social apologists for state domination.
Anti-market activists in Argentina try to blame the country's economic woes on markets, but the populist movement of Peronism is what has doomed the country to endless cycles of economic and monetary crises.
