8% of my love*

*a song from "square one".

How much love is Japan giving it's stock market? (I know that's what you reall wanna hear about.) Not much at all. In America, 50% of all personal savings are invested in the stock market. In Japan? 10%.

Yep, a paltry 10%. While 50% may not be the right number for Japan, increasing individual investment in stocks would benefit the economy greatly. I could bore you with an even more uninteresting, and probably way off the mark discussion of the liquidity trap, but no. Suffice it to say, making the money move, and play a role in the economy rather than just sitting in savings accounts would benefit Japan.

Again, I'm writing about the new yomiuri editorial. The thought there is that in order to get people's money into the market, there needs to be more security in a market investment. Not that the investment needs to be safe, but that laws need to be clear and simple, and that transparency and disclosure need to be stressed. I'm not keen on the idea of "clear and simple" laws (often code for easing tax burdens on the wealthy), but his specific ideas aren't really that important to me.

What's important is that this is yet another sign that the media is gonna stand by this idea, and keep encouraging people to get their savings into the market over the next few months and years. Another sign that I didn't mention here was the M&A (mergers and acquisitions) version of "the game of LIFE" I saw for sale a couple weeks back.

In a sense this collaboration between the media and the government to enact social changes is disturbing. It's really only a different shade of the media-gov't collusion that brought America to such a state of fear that it is willing to sacrifice it's every freedom to protect it from the seemingly omnipotent "terrorists". Except, frankly, Bush's social reforms have made America a weaker and worse country, whereas Koizumi's have the potential to make a stronger, better Japan.