While I was busy meeting customers here in San Diego, Japan was having yet another election, this time for the upper legislative house. Japan has a British-style Parliamentary system which is terribly confusing to my American brain, but it seems to involve separate elections for both houses of the national legislature as well as for prefectural and city representatives…all of which translates into burst eardrums for me, thanks to Japanese politicians’ penchant for driving around shouting from speakercars the week before the election. Sunday’s election resulted in a big win for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party, clearing the way for serious economic reform and deflation-busting, or at least that’s the idea. One big change lying in store for the Japanese economy is a consumption tax (sales tax/VAT) hike from its current 5% to 8%, then to 10% a few years down the road. This is causing causing an economic boom right now as people rush to make big-ticket purchases before the rate goes up, but there’s concern that things will crash whenever the tax hike finally goes into effect.
A big win for Prime Minister Abe and “Abenomics.”
