Japanese Third Quarter Growth

Well here it is, all coming home to daddy. The Japanese data I mean. Third quarter annual growth in Japan has just been revised down from 1.7 to 1%. This is coming home to daddy, since I continue to believe that - for demographic reasons - we will not see a self-sustaining Japanese recovery. Japan will continue to be dependent for growth on China, the US and Europe. Hence weaker than expected data should hardly be surprising.


Gross domestic product was up only 0.2 per cent on the quarter in real terms, with an annualised rate of 1 per cent. The new figures show that growth has been slower than expected, and significantly lags behind the pace in the first half of the year. The government had previously estimated quarterly growth of 0.4 per cent in the three months to September and 1.7 per cent growth on an annualised basis.

Many economists have already been disappointed by recent data on Japanese household spending growth which, at 0.4 per cent, was considerably lower than the April-to-June figure.