The incredible, shrinking global economy

By Kevin Price

Barack Obama is only one of many "chief executives" of countries around the world who is being forced to adjust the GDP of his country from 2014 to a lower figure. Furthermore, he is one of many who must continually defend stagnant economies.

I remember when I was growing up that the economy to watch was Japan's. Japan was to Baby Boomers what China is to Millennials – the rapidly growing and intimidating powerhouse that is "robbing" opportunities from the west in general, and the U.S. in particular.

Today, when we think of Japan, we think of high end and quality products, particularly in the technology sphere, if anything at all. Most young adults today would find it shocking that the lyrics of a very popular rock song in the 1960s would discuss the plight of native Americans and would include "And all the beads we made by hand, are nowadays made in Japan." If Paul Revere and the Raiders were to write a song like this today, it would certainly include China and dollar stores.

Television, radio, magazine and other media were dominated by the rise of Japan and this prominence persisted into the 1990s. Then, something happened. It was almost as if Japan had disappeared overnight. It had entered, what economists called "the lost decade" and is now seen as the "lost decades." This was a period in which Japan significantly faded from the global economic scene. This was not merely because of the rise of China, but Japan itself began to shrink in influence. What happened? Much of it is attributed to a land and stock prices burst, but there was a more fundamental problem, and it is the same issue facing economies around the world – that is the growing debt. Since the 1990s the gross public debt as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product reached 100 percent. Today it is over 200 percent. Ever since the debt exceeded the GDP, Japan's economy has largely been limping along.

This is a problem facing countries around the world. According to George Melloan in the Wall Street Journal, worldwide debt as a percentage of GDP has jumped 36 percent since 2008. That debt to GDP ratio is over 200 percent worldwide. Much of the money that would normally fuel economic growth is now being used to merely pay the interest on debts. The United States, just in the last few years, has joined this unfortunate group. Over 7 percent of the U.S. federal budget is spent on the interest on the debt alone and that is one of the fastest growing items in the federal budget. It is also one that governments have little power to shrink.

Melloan argues that, instead of being alarmed by widespread deficit spending and loose monetary policies meant to stimulate the economy, most of these countries are forging right along. According to Melloan, the world's economies are actively trying to fight what they see as "widespread" deflation. But the Wall Street Journal column notes that "central-bank worries about deflation may be misplaced. Couldn't it be that it is the mounting global debt that is dragging down economic growth, not a lack of fiscal or monetary stimulus? Yet central banks seem wedded to the so-called monetary stimulus course set by the Fed after the stock-market crash of 2008." The vast majority of those countries have found themselves struggling as they pursue the U.S. government's conventional wisdom.

Every part of an economy is aggressively pursuing the necessary capital to continue to grow. When governments crowd out that necessary capital in deficits, debt, and interest on the debt, economies cannot help but struggle where ever such policies exist.

© Kevin Price