Kenneth Rogoff: evaluation

Transcript context

…We’ve beaten every advanced economy, not just Japan. Yes, that’s fair, but they’ve fallen behind France, the UK, Germany. They were ahead of all, and they’ve fallen far behind. They’re in trouble now because they’re finally having inflation. They’re needing to raise interest rates. They’ve stuffed government debt into every orifice of the economy, into the pension systems, into the banks, into their postal savings system. Now, they’re talking about cutting pensions, cutting old age benefits because suddenly, they’re having to make interest payments on the debt, and it’s hard. I think people who use Japan as an example of everything’s fine have their head in the sand. It’s an example of, if you’re very rich, you can go down slowly, but it’s not an example of how you can have fantastic economy with debt like that. Why do some places, say, the much earlier UK — they have crises, and Japan, whatever the standard of living issues may be, there’s no crisis. There’s no run on anything. It’s quite peaceful.…

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