
About the Japanese Economy Today : Interview with Michael Saylor MicroStrategy CEO ③
I think Japan has the same challenges macroeconomically as every other country has. It has undergone a very aggressive monetary expansion by the central banks. The Japanese banks own a great deal of the equity but have a lot of the national debt as well. They are expanding the money supply, just like the EU and the US federal government are. The number one & overarching problem in this situation is assets are over-inflated and there is a lack of price discovery in the market. The capital markets have frozen including the markets for bonds, stocks, real estate, etc. All of those asset values are inflated such that the average person cannot work and make enough money to buy them. As the price of all these assets go up, and the wages are flat or going up much slower, it freezes a whole class of people out of being able to buy assets.