It’s still early but the economic sun of JAPAN has finally moved above the horizon. After nearly ten or more year’s recession, mutual funds daring – or foolish- enough to invest in JAPAN are at last seeing the light of day and some are doing very well indeed.

An economic turnaround across the PACIFIC has been predicted so often that WALL STREET pretty much ignored it. The obstacle: the basic change needed, the rigidities in Japanese labour, capital, land markets and some solution to the banking problem never seemed to follow. Each new finance minister would announce a revolutionary program-but nothing happened.

Schroeder economists are perplexed that private consumption added to the rise in GDP through household spending fell during the quarter. “With the GDP data telling us the opposite of what we are observing in the economy,” says the report,” What does this do to the forecasts?” Obviously, forecasts including Schroeder will shoot up. And the numbers really show what happening or not they will become self-fulfilling by improving business and consumer sentiment, which will lower the saving rate, and like spending. Altogether, it’s an economist’s nightmare.