Wednesday, January 16, 2013

These Forgotten Stocks are Ready to Take Off..

In the late 1980s, Japan's economy was the envy of the world. The country's meteoric rise to become the world's second-largest economy coupled with the dominance of Japanese brands such as Sony, Toyota and Kubota gave rise to the term "Japanese Economic Miracle."

Managers around the world sought to emulate the nation's manufacturing techniques. Japanese companies and consumers, enriched by their nation's rapid economic growth, bought up prime real estate and other assets in the United States, Europe and elsewhere.

 But Japan's miracle was built in part on a bubble. In 1989, at the height of the property bubble, choice commercial property in Tokyo sold for more than $20,000 per square foot. Average Japanese homes near the nation's six largest cities cost the equivalent of 30 to 50 times the median Japanese income, an unsustainable level. Gains in residential and office properties between 1986 and the top of the property bubble in 1991 were even more dramatic than home price gains in the United States during the mid-2000s.

The economic miracle came to an abrupt end in 1991 as the nation's overheated real estate market collapsed and the benchmark Nikkei 225 stock Index lost nearly a third of its value in U.S. dollar terms in the 1990s, even as stocks in the United States and Europe saw their biggest gains in decades.

The 20-year hangover
Japan continues to suffer under the hangover of its erstwhile boom. The country has continued to suffer from bouts of deflation -- a general decline in price across the economy -- driven in part by declining property prices in parts of the country, even more than 20 years after the bubble burst. Deflation is particularly damaging to the economy as it discourages credit. When consumers and businesses borrow money they typically post collateral in the form of assets such as real estate or equipment. But in a deflationary environment, the value of this collateral is constantly eroding, making it less valuable as a loan guarantee. (more)


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