#2-16 The magic of disaporas [19th Nov, 2011]

The magic of disaporas [19th Nov, 2011]

November 27th 2011 10:00-12:00

Ueno Renoir

Iino, Ogawa, Kurasawa, Yamagata, Ido, Murakami, Sugahara and Tomozawa

Articles we discussed

[Leaders][The Euro crisis] The German problem

[Leaders][Free trade in the Pacific] A small reason to be cheerful

[Asia][America in the Asia-Pacific] We’re back

[Asia][China’s economy] Fearful symmetry

[F&E][Japan’s economy] Whose lost decade?

In contrast to a week before, eight people gathered this week in Ueno. Several Renoir café is located in Ueno. We used the one near from Ueno Park. For the first time, Murakami prepared his handouts and made his presentation about China’s economy. Some members presented in English but most of our discussion was in Japanese.

The first article Ido picked up was about the important role of German to settle the Euro crisis. Many of German’s economic establishments think that big rescue is not good for the dull southern governments such as Greece so if Mrs Merkel wants to save euro by buying bonds or other ways, she must challenge them in her country. Ido questioned us about German’s merit to rescue other countries. As the article mentioned, German certainly enjoyed Euro economy. They got advantages from euro exchange rate and got profits by expanding their trade. We also discussed German’s responsibility and the similarity between Euro crisis and Southern America’s crisis decades ago.

TPP was a hot topic this week so Ogawa and Kurasawa picked up articles related to America and the Pacific. We discussed much about protectionism and free trade policy. We mostly agreed the decision of Japan to join TPP discussion but some concerned of influences to medical industry, agriculture and livestock industry. Ogawa also pointed out based on the article that we have to understand TPP not only as an economical issue but also security issue. America admits China’s “peaceful rise” of their economy but America is also considering power balance between the Pacific. The region is the world’s most economically vibrant region, which proved to be the source of the greatest threats to security over coming decades. China is at the heart of things.

Our next discussion focused on China’s worsening economy. Murakami pointed out China’s dilemmas. Because of the Euro crisis deepen, china’s economic tightening is over and its easing has begun. (EU accounts for a fifth of China’s economy) However, they fear housing bubble burst because of the tightening. We understand the world is connected each other and China’s economy is also challenging situation.

The last article Yamagata chosen describes positive aspect of Japan’s economy. He picked up it because he wanted to make it clear what is a solution for Japanese fiscal problem by seeing positive side. The article mentions that Japan is suffering from “Structural pessimism”. And it focuses the strong points that Japan has. Yamagata commented that he agrees to the idea that it is better to compare Japan with US and Europe than China. But he also said that he disagrees to the too positive observation of the article.

Even on Sunday morning, this Renoir café was crowded with people. This might be because the place the café is located is convenient for most of the people who have something to do in Ueno. A party of eight people was larger than expected so we have to consider if more people come to join the study group.