Richard Koo: How the West is Repeating Japan's Mistakes

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1. So Keynes advice is the problem or the solution? This gentleman appreciates Keynesian style Intervention and pump priming of the Macroeconomy, which can create other kind of problems in the long - run as we saw in Post-War Europe during the 1970s!!!
2. Please. China is the winner. China is having an extremely high corporate debt level, and its rate are growing at such a scary rate. It also doesnt help that these corporate debts are largely state owned companies, and at some point the government have to chip in. China story, if you look at it, is extremely the same as Japan. My bet is that come 2017 China will again have a boom until early 2020 when it will finally collapsed. The government have the opportunity to let the market correct itself in 2008, but like any other countries (and especially China, with their crazy 70% of GDP injection into the economy) they dont want to let market correct itself. They kept on injecting steroids into the economy and make them became crazier and crazier.
3. Alright so what he's saying is that the government should bail everyone out or do a giant epic QE then the economy would start growing again?
4. The real estate companies can borrow from government at low rates o to build public transit system in tier one cities and build highways and bridges to charge the fast growing car owners, so there will be less real estate construction projects. Even if the US goes into another round of easing and the bubble in real estate market keeps inflating, the government can tighten loan requirements.
5. They don't address the central problem, in my view, that banks falsely charge interest on other people's promissory notes in a scheme where the reserve is smaller than the so-called down payment which is actually risk of default insurance. The false interest charges steal .50 on the dollar and they don't issue currency to cover the interest which results in escalation to a crash every 80 years where banks can finish stealing everything by way of foreclosure. His solution just puts some scotch tape over this whole dog's breakfast.
6. Keynesian economist explains Keynesian economics in a Keynesian economy. Great, but that is why he is wrong
7. I heard the Ottoman Empire disintegrated because of debt, and WW1 didn't help. So too much debt is bad in the long term.
8. Haha "for 15 years". When did you get out .. hmmm... never. So let me clear this out. 1% wasnt enough? 0%? -0.1 whatever that is? Nothing? How much money heroin do you need for fucks sake?
9. Richard Koo is an idiot. He can't admit they did not know what they are doing, still don't know what they are doing, and will not know what they are doing in our lifetime. Central planners should be executed for crimes against humanity.
10. In a world where it is "dangerous that everyone is paying down debt, and no one is borrowing money" you know the system is flawed.
11. Well, yes China has beeng growing because of massive stimilus. But mostly the gdp growth is made up from building these ghost cities. On the gdp that shows up as growth but it's only a fasad. More than that, this whole idea of consumerism will eventually destroy the world. Look how they are living over their, that's not a life , it's not healthy and it's not sustainable. They have all these plastic products and cheap electronics but not even clean air to breath. There wouldbe nowhere to live if everyone where doing like China. An economy is more than numbers, we have to look on the real world and this keynesian econmic system is destroying the world.
12. In short - massive and sustained fiscal stimulus won't stop US from going into recession, because massive and sustained fiscal stimulus let China avoid going into recession.
13. debt is the problem.even with japanese efficiency they are failing.its amazing.
14. it makes no sense, why is it that a massive chinese stimulus works but a massive american stimulus falls on it's face?
15. What a Keynesian...
16. From 1991 to 2003, Japan averaged about 1.4% growth in real terms. That's not too shabby for a country with a top ten per capita income. I'm starting to suspect that Japan never experienced any sort of lost decade at all. 
17. I find Richard's arguments curious, especially since Japan did spend a boatload of money during their lost decade and nothing came of it. In fact, I would have thought Japan's lost decade would have served as a referendum on why fiscal stimulus ends up achieving nothing. And that's the problem. People keep seeing Japan's lost decade as some kind of short term AD problem rather than even giving passing thought to it being a long term structural(or AS) problem. I'm not saying I know for sure it's the latter and not the former, I'm just amazed at how it's not even being seriously considered. 
18. But if you borrow and spend money in the same time, how do you pay the debt? I'm confused though. This makes sense, but basically it is just accumulation of debt for the private and public sector. The government does not always have money to provide stimulus, especially with people demanding lower taxes. For countries like Canada, money is needed to be spend to support the public health care infrastructure. The banks then have to have money available to provide to people who decide they want to eventually spend their savings. The money goes into the economy but the bank loses assets. With existing debts, say their balance sheets are under water, the companies and banks need to pay off the debt that they have anyway.
19. If you put in money in bank reserves, it shows up as excess deposits and if there are no borrowers, those deposits are used to buy assets. The inflation from "quantitative easing" shows up in financial assets first and then makes its way to consumer prices. Also, if you have over $50+ trillion in assets and you print money to buy financial assets, you won't get very much inflation if there is no private sector credit demand. Japan got stuck in a debt deflation, which we avoided.
20. Koo is exactly right. We are as Krugman would say-in a liquidity trap. What we need is economic stimulus but with a twist. It must be direct aid to consumers. Or in other words-to get around corporate deleveraging we must directly stimulate people rather than corporations. So this means, increase wages, lower the cost of health care, expand worker protection, invest in education, and lower consumer debt. Then we people instead of corporations are investing in the economy it will improve.