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Originally Posted by freeier  i do not have contacts to the accounting jobs in japan. front office jobs i do get alot of calls but i guess if you can't speak japanese and you have no prior experience in derivatives or products that rules you out.
good that you have your own view of how the economy is, but i have serious doubt of your trend of argument in terms of economy. anyway whether in japan or elsewhere, when the shit hits the fan everyone is going to suffer. deflation is about prices coming down. and once prices started going up technically deflation is off and you get into a cycle where inflation kicks in. |
Hi Freeier
Do you work in recruitment agency for Tokyo jobs? If so I would really be grateful if you can help in one way or another. It doesn’t have to be front office job, it can be back/middle office accounting job too - like management report etc.
I know not being able to speak Japanese is a stumbling block. I will go and learn some Japanese, and post back when I have gain some qualification. I have already taught myself hiragana and katakana. But I do believe being in the country is the best way to learn and one picks up the language faster then studying for a year.
I am not sure what you are basing your opinion on, on Japan's economy. Price increase is only one part of the equation for coming out of deflation. Even, if we only look at price alone, I don't think it has a true reflection of Japan coming out of a deflation economy. They may be at the border, and if they are slightly more weighted to inflation, I think they will easily slip back to deflation if BoJ doesn't manage their monetary policy correctly.
I don't know if you have been following the outcome of the quarter percent increase to the half percent by BoJ. I feel it's more of political then economical reason, or at least trying to move the sentiment in the hope people will start to invest and kick start the economy.
Since BoJ increased their interest to 0.5%. It was reported Japanese companies became more reluctant to borrow money to invest for future growth. Imagine the cost of borrowing is only 1% to 2%, I will be jumping to borrow the money. I am sure it is not hard to make an annual return of minimum 2%.
I suppose with the ever uncertainty of the US and global economy, and the Japanese culture towards investment and saving/spending, this is the natural reaction within the commercial industry. Because of this I doubt there will be further spending or borrowing to push up prices and wealth within the economy (hence more of a truer picture of Japan still in deflation). I can give you a very good example, just by looking at Germany housing market. You just can't shift people's spending pattern and into buying properties in Germany.
As I am aware, for the past several months BoJ have wanted to increase their base rate to 0.75% but couldn't as they were worried about how the US market goes and how it impacted local business. This is important to them as it shows their confidence of Japan being out of deflation. But as today stands, I can’t see them having an increase until after half of this year.
Like you said when the shit hit the fan everyone will get it. This reminds me of an old saying in the stock market: "when the New York stock exchange sneezes, everyone will catch the cold".
I still remember last year around summer time, when the yen went strong against the dollar one of the major car company in Japan reported an increase in profit due to exchange rate interpretation and the share prices shot up immediately on the day. At the time, I was some what surprised with this, as to me it seem like people have forgotten the long term effect of currency against a business, especially a business that heavily rely on export. Well it did not take the market more then a day to realise this. A high yen against the dollar will mean the car manufacturing company will be uncompetitive in the US and US market was their major customer and main stream of income. And yes the price plummeted as quickly as it went up.
What I am trying to point out here is that Japan is a great invention country and thus have a lot of product and the 4th largest GDP countries in the world, we cannot forget that their economy is heavily based on export of manufacturing products and a tourism destination. In any business if you rely heavily on one customer your risk are high and will be associated with this customer. Applying this model to Japan economy, we have the equation – If US go into recession, Japan will go to recession. If Yen gets strong, production and demand for export good will be low, tourism will be low and hence Japan economy will slump. So on this thought I don’t think Japan is truly out of deflation.
If my understanding of the Japasese culture is correct - "saving money under the bed" and the article about not enough institutional investor in Japan. This inevitably means there is no real spender or investor to take the price further. People's behaviour and culture is the most important fact in any business, economy as well as day to day life. I still think many of the older generation who are the one with spending power are still shy, from their experience from the great property bust. Once bitten forever shy.
I would agree that property prices have increased during the past 2-3 years. But how much of this is due to individual purchases and how much is due to institutional investment would be an interesting figure.
One more not to take into account is the possibility of inflation being imported especially when it comes to raw material like food and oil (bump up by bad weather and China buying into commodities like mad, as they don't know where to off load their trillion of US dollars trade surplus they have manage to accumulate themselves into, in the wake of weak dollar).
Whilst on the other hand Businesses is doing well (apart from catering business who has to adsorb the increase food cost), local citizen are not feeling the impact of this boom (may be this is why some of the Japanese people I have spoken to doesn’t have a good vibe of the current economy in Japan) as their salaries are long over due for an increase. If company, so to say be doing well and are not passing on their profits to their employees, where will the spending power be to boost and support for the so called inflation economy the Japanese government are claiming themselves to be in?
What this mean, until government cut tax or business increases salaries etc I still feel much of the country will be suppressed and starved off from investment (=growth). What we will see is the cycle of deflation kicking back in - People without money means they will not buy (or have confidence to borrow money no matter how low the interest rate is) - and without this investment or spending in the economy (and businesses) there will be no substantial growth (or profit). Confidence will still remain low and business will not pass on the rewards to their employees. Continue like this Japan will be still stuck in their deflation cycle and wish for the best to tackle their imported inflation whilst US go through a slump.
I might sound very grim on the outlook of Japan here. But in a matter of fact I am not. I just want to highlight what I mean by Japan not truly being out of deflation. I might be wrong and the specialist in the field might disagree with me.
However, I do think Japan is still going to be one of the top four/five countries/continent – (Europe, US, China, Japan – highest GDP est 2006/07 – from a source a friend sent to me in Dec07)
You may be thinking why I am so concern about this. To move to a country whose employment market for foreigners’ are so competitive, I can’t think of other choice then packing it all in and move to Japan and take my gamble in looking for jobs. If the economy is going the way I think it might be in the short-term, I would be pretty stuck. Either way of entry to the employment market in Tokyo, I would not like to find myself in a position where the slump in the global economy market will force me to have to leave Japan, once I am there. But I suppose if I manage to find a Japanese firm, their track record of life time employment and looking after their staff (what appeals to me in addition to the Japanese culture and food) I should be safe under any circumstance as long as I do a good job right?!
Sorry for diverging on what this post intention was originally set out for .. Freeier, I really hope you or someone who read this post can help me in search for a right job, a life time job in Tokyo...A man with great skills who has a lot to offer then what he already has demonstrated on his resume
Should I stop putting my accountant hat on and ask the famous Shakespeare question:
“To Be or not to Be”
“To plunge or not to plunge”
Sometime, I wish I know more people so they could help me forward my CV and talk them into hiring me!
