Not to argue for a much more boring media, but it would be nice if this New York Times article on the aftereffects of Japan's lost decade had some actual data in it. It reports, for instance, that "even well-off Japanese households use old bath water to do laundry," and while I don't want to dismiss anecdata on its face, I'm going to need a bit more evidence that that's the norm in a country that makes both the world's fastest washing machine and, at one point, a human washing machine. Also, I hear their toilets talk. And what data the article does have is confusing. Its charts come under the title "In Japan, Neither Spending Nor Saving." But as Dean Baker points out, "saving simply means not spending, so, if consumers are not spending, then by definition they are saving." Meanwhile, there's no cross-country comparisons. The relevant data for the article's thesis -- that the "lost decade" is still depressing consumer demand -- would be countries with similar GDP-per-capita but much more spending.
