Any wonder I think you have a career in education with using a word like Sisyphean.Wow,I thought to myself,this will be great word to add to my limited vocabulary,so all that was to do now, was to google it and find it's meaning. How disappointed I was to find out that it could be a description to fit my daily household chores.
Ok,on to the article.
One of my pet hates is that of very poor reporting in the media.It's one area in which I agree with Glenn Stevens in which he describes financial reporting as something to be desired.One reason I run my GOOD NEWS stories as the world is never as bad as reported.Barack Obama said the same thing in a recent speech at UQ.
For a start your link took me to a .com site. Most of my info comes from either .edu or .org sites and generally I like to give .com sites a wide berth unless I trust the author such as amp.com.au/oliver's insights as an example.
Anyway out of courtesy I clicked on and straight away I seen a photo of two National guards and I thought to myself, this article belongs in the waste bin, as what on Earth has the picture of two guards got to do with deflation.....this is gonna be a beat-up, surely. And yep the first line in the article confirmed that view.
The article is so full of mistakes it is next USELESS.
For a start, deflation is, in general, caused by falling demand,and to reverse the trend lowering interest rates to create demand is a common ploy.The article did not even mention this and it's very omission show's the lack of knowledge by the author.Here is a link you may find useful..
He also suggests that by lowering the Yen,deflation is also being spread.
Well, he fails to mention that lowering the yen is a two way bet...as,sure the exports will be cheaper,but imports should be dearer,leading to,yes, u guessed it,inflation.Not only that,with the interplay of trading with different nations,eg,Japan also trades with the US and Australia,the chance of it causing deflation to spread throughout the world is somewhat limited.Also a currency devaluation is not the whole story as it depends on the internal demand dynamics of the countries involved...Here is what I'm talking about....
There is so many mistakes in this article I'm running out of time to list them.
Here's another BIG mistake...
"A recent study by Naohisa Hirakata and Yuto Iwasaki from the Bank of Japan suggests that China’s weak-yuan policy - a polite way of saying currency manipulation to gain export share – was the chief cause of Japan’s deflation crisis over its two Lost Decades"
What a load of baloney.
For a start the 'Lost Decades' is somewhat of a beat-up as it follows 2 decades of enormous growth,with the net result of 40 years giving Japan the same growth of other nations.Here is the link...
Also,most economists sight the cause of the 'Lost decades' to the bursting of the Japanese property and stock market bubble of the late 80's,not China's weak yuan policy as the article suggests...here is the link..
Just one last thing before I rush off....from the article-
"even as both sides rearm, and their warships threaten each other daily in Senkaku waters"
Warships....What has that got to do with inflation,and obviously the author has not travelled to Japan,as the modern day Japanese would much rather mug themselves than anyone else.They are one of the most peaceful peoples on the planet with China not that far behind in the middle ranks for peace.
Here is the map of peaceful countries...
(20min delay)