Japanese economy not first class, says minister

[Foxy Brown]

Amid political meltdown, crashing stock markets and plunging consumer confidence, the Japanese Government has declared that the world’s second-big-gest economy is “no longer first class”.

In a speech to open the new session of Parliament yesterday, Hiroko Ota, the Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister, called for urgent measures to revitalise an economy fast losing competitiveness. Ms Ota vowed to focus on resurrecting Japan’s edge, but admitted that “unfortunately, Japan is no longer in a situation in which the nation is a first-class economy”.

[Asmodai]

I wonder who he thinks does have a first class economy.

The US is having troubles of it's own. Europe has high unemployment, high taxes and problems with productivity, Russia and Canada are dependent on selling natural resources, China is booming but it still has huge numbers in poverty and a low standard of living...

I guess Switzerland might qualify, but Japan is certainly better off economically than most.

[THUNDERDUCK]

The graying population, stagnant population growth are killing them.  US has problems with a changing economy, unemployment etc.