午夜剧场

When observing financial markets for a long time, one truly understands that "history repeats itself." This repetition is not merely a cycle of good and bad economic phases. Economically, the formation and collapse of bubbles repeat roughly every 10 years. Socially, excessive shareholder preference and worker protection repeat every 30 to 50 years.

In recent years, excessive shareholder capitalism has faced strong criticism for causing inequality and anti-globalization movements. Typically, this involves actions by global corporations to maximize shareholder profit, such as cutting employee wages and moving factory locations to emerging countries in search of lower costs.

Excessive shareholder capitalism should be corrected. However, it is also a problem if the pendulum swings too far in the opposite direction. The issues can be broadly divided into two categories. The first is the risk of leaning toward excessive worker protection in a way that damages shareholder interests. The second is the risk of anti-globalization sharpening into a de facto struggle for hegemony between the U.S. and China, amid support for "America First" within the United States.

Due to these two risks, there is a possibility that the 1970s in the United States will be repeated. In the U.S. at that time, the domestic economy stagnated and high inflation progressed. Its prestige in the international community plummeted, leading to the dollar crisis and the Carter crisis. Naturally, stock prices also stagnated.

The primary motivation for writing this book is a sense of crisis that these mistakes must not be repeated. This perspective should also be beneficial for securities investments, such as stocks.

The risks are not limited to the United States. Throughout the post-war era, the U.S. social system has consistently served as a global precedent. We should assume that, over time, these trends will spread to Japan and the rest of the world.

Japan, in particular, faces problems that could be called underlying conditions, such as a declining population, fiscal deficits, and the inability to achieve economic revitalization in terms of autonomous growth, even if economic recovery can be achieved through policy responses. In this book, I have also presented a blueprint for solving these problems.

Finally, regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, it will likely cause "invisible crises" to be more clearly "visualized." Particularly problematic are the further increase in debt for nations and corporations and the sharpening of the U.S.-China struggle for hegemony. As a result, the timeframe for problem-solving is likely to shorten.

Koichi Kurose

午夜剧场 Press

564 pages, 2,700 yen (excluding tax)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.