#2-14 The missing middle [Nov 5th, 2011]

The missing middle [Nov 5th, 2011]

Yoyogi Renoir Nov 13th, 2011

Ono, Ogawa, Tomozawa, Tsuji and Sugahara

Articles we discussed:

[Leaders][A euro referendum] Greece’s woes

[Asia][Banyan] Echoes of dreamland

[Business] Land of the wasted talent

5 people gathered this week including 2 guests as observers. Tsuji is a friend of Ono and he met Ogawa once before graduate. He is working at a governmental financial organization. Sugahara joined us for the second time and she met Ono for the first time. We discussed 3 articles, which is the fewest among our recent discussions. We could discuss and share our thought using enough time.

The first article we followed was “Greece’s woes” from Leaders. Ono picked up the article because he was interested in a word “Political capital” introduced in this article. This word is new for me. It means the power that popularity confers on a politician. We had two discussion points. The first is evaluation of “comprehensive package” to save the euro, arranged on October. The second is political capital of our government to realize reconstruction of the economy. We also mentioned a possibility of a tax increase and a national debt failure.

The second article we discussed is “Echoes of dreamland” from Banyan. “Five Power Defense Arrangement”(FPDA) consist of 5 countries, New Zealand, Australia, Malaysia, Singapore and Britain. This arrangement concluded in 1971 during a cold war and still work as a multilateral security agreement with an operational dimension. Ogawa picked up the article to see not only economic agreement such as TPP but also security agreements around Asia.

Last article Tomozawa picked up was “Land of wasted talent” from business. The topic of the article is a demographic catastrophe and Japanese firms. As we already know, Japan’s population of 127m is predicted to fall to 90m by 2050. As recently as 1990, working age Japanese outnumbered children and the elderly by seven to three. By 2050 the ration will be one to one, which cause labor shortage. We mainly discussed based on a opinion of Ms. Sugawara. She introduced us the realities and difficulties of raising children and she mentioned that the discussion of the article was like “an armchair theory”. It was interesting discussion because usually we discussed among the same generation but today didn’t.

It was a second time we use Renoir in Yoyogi. This place is not crowded so we can easily get seats for members. Tomozawa and Ogawa changed their presentation in English. It always impressed us that Ono prepares advanced argument based on his macro economic knowledge. I think I should prepare for the discussion much more.