The main difficulty currently confronting Japan's stock market is the difference between the coun...
The main difficulty currently confronting Japan's stock market is the difference between the country's real and nominal economies. Encouragingly, Japan's real GDP for the second quarter was up 0.6% quarter-on-quarter, outperforming expectations of 0.2%. However, both real consumer spending and real capital spending were down in nominal terms, while the GDP deflator has been negative since the beginning of 1998. Real growth is all well and good, but if prices are falling faster than volume output expands, it is still difficult for companies to grow profits. Japan's economy remain...
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