#2-15 That’s all, falks [12th Nov, 2011]

That’s all, falks [12th Nov, 2011]

Shibuya ON THE CORNER – NO.8 BEAR POND 20th Nov, 2011 10:00-12:00
Ogawa, Yamagata and Shimada

What we discussed:

[Briefing][South Korea’s economy] What do you do when you reach the top

[Special report: Europe and its currency][The causes] A very short history of the crisis

This week we gathered at Shibuya after a long time. A friend of mine introduced me the café last week so we decided to use it right away. BGM was a little bit loud but it was comfortable to sit and talk in this space. Some of our members couldn’t join us so we were only three but we started our discussion as usual.

The first article Ogawa picked up was “What do you do when you reach the top” from Briefing. This article is about South Korea’s economy and as the title implies, it says that South Korea needs new tactics and innovation because it has already reach the top of the world economy like EU and Japan. The reason Ogawa chose the article to was that he wanted to focus on difference between Korean and Japan’s current situation and to discuss what we Japanese have learned from mistakes in the lost two decades that Korea didn’t have experienced. The situation of Korea looks similar to Japan in 80’ and 90’. As Korea, we also need innovation and new tactics to make it realized. But we had already 2o years after we reached to the top like Korea confronts now. Is Japan changed to be a front-runner? If we already changed our economy from a follower to a front-runner, we might get some new experiences and learning that Korea doesn’t have. We discussed mainly on problems and hardships of Korea’s economy. We can easily find faults with a neighbor but its difficult to find ourselves’. 

The second article was from special report on Europe and its currency. From several articles, Shimada picked up “A very short history of the crisis”. He chose it to comprehend euro zone crisis and to discuss the solution for it. The article mainly criticizes Germany attitude towards the crisis and insists that Germany should contribute and take a responsibility mentioning low interest rates and profitable trade that they have enjoyed for a decade. The economist thinks the only solution for the problem rests on German’s shoulder. Shimada pointed out another interesting discussion point: If the low interesting rate is one of the main factor for the euro crisis, is Japan also fell into the same crisis in near future? We followed the current situation of Japan’s debt and concluded we need to continue following the topic.

Our discussion sometimes goes into a demonstration of each person’s knowledge. This doesn’t favorable style. I want to make our discussion, so to speak, a battle of values, ethics and morals. What we encounter is the problem we couldn’t find the right solution easily. There is no right answer for such a kind of problem. All we need is to choose our way to step forward. To make a decision, we follow our own compasses such as sense of values, morals and ethics. This is our aim in our discussion.