Financial Times (July 23)
“Japan is now behaving like a country that has emerged from a malaise once considered incurable. Deflation now seems consigned to the past. The output gap has closed. Pricing power has returned to parts of the economy that have not known it for years…. The scale and significance of the alteration are remarkable. No country of Japan’s economic size has spent anything like as long in the grip of falling prices and none has emerged with anything like its suite of unknowns as it returns to a still unspecified ‘normal.’”
Tags: Deflation, Economy, Emerged, Japan, Malaise, Normal, Output gap, Pricing power, Remarkable, Scale, Significance, Unknowns
The Economist (November 23)
Across Asia a surprising and unwelcome phenomenon is arising: middle-class stagnation. Over the past three years, for example, 6 million Indonesians fell “into the ‘aspiring middle class,’” and are now “a stone’s throw away from poverty.” The nation’s middle-class population share dropped “to 17% from 22% before the pandemic.” This “middle-class malaise” is not restricted to Indonesia and may “shake up everything from profits to politics” throughout Asia.
Tags: 17%, 6 million, Asia, Aspiring, Indonesians, Malaise, Middle class, Pandemic, Politics, Population, Poverty, Profits, Stagnation, Surprising, Unwelcome
Financial Times (January 8)
With a $3 trillion valuation, Apple “is worth more than the entire FTSE 100 index—highlighting the malaise of what was long one of the world’s leading stock markets.” In a decade and a half, the LSE’s “share of global equity values has fallen from 8.5 per cent to 3.6 per cent.”
Tags: $3 trillion, Apple, Fallen, FTSE 100, Global equity values, Leading, LSE, Malaise, Stock markets, Valuation
New York Times (September 10)
The Social Progress Index “finds that the quality of life has dropped in America over the last decade, even as it has risen almost everywhere else.” Steeper than any other country’s, the decline “is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate President Trump and that festered under leaders of both parties. Trump is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration.”
Tags: Acceleration, Festered, Malaise, Quality of life, Social Progress Index, Structural problems, Symptom, Trump, U.S.
