A Lost Decade? We Should Be So Lucky - Das

``A growing number of economists seem convinced that the U.S., European Union and China are all headed for a prolonged period of sluggish growth -- secular stagnation, in the words of former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. A close parallel would seem to be 1990s Japan. There, too, the bursting of debt-funded asset price bubbles gave way to multiple rounds of fiscal stimulus, massive monetary easing and rock-bottom interest rates. Rescue efforts stabilized conditions but couldn't spark a sustainable recovery, leaving the economy mired in low growth, low inflation and high debt... [But] when Japan entered its downturn, however, the country had several advantages both internally and externally that nations today don't... First and foremost, at the onset of its crisis, Japan enjoyed modest levels of government debt -- around 20 percent of GDP -- as well as strong domestic savings and an abnormally high home bias in investment...''