TIME & TIME AGAIN LIKE BEFORE
WASHINGTON - China's holdings of US Treasury bonds tumbled in December, allowing Japan to take over as the top holder of American government debt, according to Treasury data released Tuesday.
China's bond holdings dropped substantially to 755.4 billion dollars in the last month of December from 789.6 billion in November, said the Treasury's international capital data report.
Japan's holdings increased to 768.8 billion dollars in December from 757.3 billion dollars in November, according to the data.
http://www.intellasia.net/news/articles/regional/111287367.shtml
However this is the norm for decades before late in 2008. Anyway, China does not need America as its economic/security ally but Japan needs.
SECTION I: Next Generation Connectivity
According to the country rankings of various speeds of the Internet broadband connectivity, Japan is No.1, South Korea No.2, Netherlands No.3, Sweden No.4, Denmark No.5, Norway No.6, Finland No.7, France No.8, Germany No.9, Switzerland No.10, and the United States No.11.
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On July 14, 2009, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University would conduct an independent expert review of existing literature and studies about broadband deployment and usage throughout the world and that this project would help inform the FCC's efforts in developing the National Broadband Plan. The Berkman Center's Final Report was submitted to the FCC on February 16, 2010.
(Click to enlarge.)http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/pubrelease/broadband/
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/sites/cyber.law.harvard.edu/files/Berkman_Center_Broadband_Final_Report-C3_15Feb2010.pdf
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The population of the U.S. is 300 million while China has the 1.3 billion or 1,300 million population.
It is not so easy for each government to take care of every one of its people.
However, South Korea with 48 million population can easily apply 3G cellular phone connectivity relatively easily to all the users, though Japan has 127 million population.
SECTION II: How Money Circulates
The basic equation is as follows:
Total Sales = Companies' Money + Workers' Money + Tax
Global competition with China as a new major factor pushes prices down and thus sales down in terms of an amount of money.
Less nominal sales result in less workers' money and thus less consumption.
Less nominal sales also result in less tax.
However tax must be spent in the form of the government budget execution not only in the global market but also in the domestic market segments where the influence of China are small. In those segments without a strong influence of globalization and China, prices have not decreased or discounted so much, requesting a conventional higher level of payment.
Tax = Spending in Market under Globalization + Spending in Traditional Market by a Government.
Therefore, if nominal sales get lowered due to globalization, tax spending by a government cannot be lowered proportionally, resulting in budget deficits on the government's balance sheet.
This tells what has happened in Japan in these 15 years.
However, conventional economists like the following equation:
Money from Central Bank = Money in City Banks + Money in Companies + Money in Households + Tax
Yet, this equation never tells why deflation can happen.
First of all, sale activities by people must be a starting point in economy. Central banks, such as the Bank of Japan, and incomes of economists must be handled later.
Before realization of the non-money economy, the non-bank economy must come.
It is so since banks never produce anything but false credit and crazy interest, while claiming concrete sales in market.
Come back to your right sense!
SECTION III: Atomic-Bomb Surviving Piano to USA
In 1932, YAMAHA produced a grand piano with 85 (not presently typical 88) ivory keys, though such a pino was then expensive for ordinary Japanese.
In 1945, it was owned and used by a family whose house in Hiroshima City was hit by an American atomic (nuclear) bomb that blasted one mile far.
However, a teenage girl of the family and the piano survived the most devastating attack in WWII; she continued to use it for 60 years till 2005. Then she found a tuner, who happened to be a second generation Hibakusya (a victim of the atomic bomb) and decided to entrust a repair of her piano to him, since he was engaged in repairing abandoned pianos to offer them free to hospitals and so on.
Since the completion of the repair, the piano has been played 400 times in various peace events in Japan.
This year, the piano is going to be shipped to New York to join a memoir service for the 9/11 Terror victims.
(http://shop.kodansha.jp/bc/books/topics/misako/ )
This is typical of a good Japanese story.
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Recently some notable Japanese in the art, entertainment, and sports fields died one after another.
However no Japanese died in war in these 65 years after WWII. In the world, such a country must be rare, especially among the major economic powers. People in military uniform are really rare to be seen on the Japanese streets and stations. Most of the Japanese people have lived and died in these 65 years without touching or seeing guns and rifles except those carried by policemen, hunters, or sports shooters.
It was like the samurai era before the start of Japan's modernization in 1860's. Under the Tokugawa samurai regime, only samurais carried full-size swords while matchlocks were kept deep inside castles.
As the centuries-long Tokugawa samurai era fostered some important aspects of the Japanese culture, the present peaceful era might be also forming new and important aspects of the Japanese culture that will influence the rest of the 21st century and beyond...
(http://www.just-oldies.com/1961/strangers_in_the_night.htm )
Mar 2:18 And the disciples of John and of the Pharisees used to fast: and they come and say unto him, Why do the disciples of John and of the Pharisees fast, but thy disciples fast not?
Mar 2:19 And Jesus said unto them, Can the children of the bridechamber fast, while the bridegroom is with them? as long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast.
Mar 2:20 But the days will come, when the bridegroom shall be taken away from them, and then shall they fast in those days.
Mar 2:21 No man also seweth a piece of new cloth on an old garment: else the new piece that filled it up taketh away from the old, and the rent is made worse.