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Dogs and DemonsHowever, Osaka could still lose in the race to become the biggest prefectural bankruptcy, for the municipality of Tokyo also met disaster at the waterfront, and its shortfall for fiscal 2000 is three times larger than Osaka's, and growing. Quantifying Japan's debt crisis is not easy, because its debts are so well disguised that nobody knows the exact figure. In a special pamphlet on the national debt, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported: «In addition to the general budget, there are 38 special accounts and the Zaito program, known as the 'second budget,' as well as debts of local governments. All of these are intertwined with one another, and have become a bloated monster.» Here is one estimate: In 1999, revenue shortfalls for the official «first budget» came to JPY31 trillion, an astonishing 37.9 percent of expenditures. Measured as a percentage of national product, Japan's deficit came to 10 percent of GDP, jumping right off the scale when compared with the OECD average of 1.2 percent; the nearest competitor for big-deficit spending among advanced industrial nations was France, at 2.4 percent of GDP Adding long-term bonds, by 1999 Japan's cumulative debt had risen to JPY395 trillion, amounting to 72 percent of GDP (the United States' gross federal debt, in contrast, comes to 64 percent of GDP). But this is not all ...» |
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