It is asked, to ask the questions that come to mind after reading both of these stories, and answer those questions, with or without whether an analysis is necessary to do so:
Story 1, published by the NY Times this yesterday:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/business/global/japan-initiates-a-bold-bid-to-end-years-of-falling-prices.html?pagewanted=1&ref=world
Japan Initiates Bold Bid to End Years of Tumbling Prices
Story 2, written in September 2002:
http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL31617.pdf
Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
The Economic Effects of 9/11:
A Retrospective Assessment
Highlights of story 1:
Japan Initiates Bold Bid to End Years of Tumbling Prices
April 4, 2013
TOKYO — Haruhiko Kuroda, the new governor of the Bank of Japan, delivered on his promise to drastically change Japan’s economic policy to end a long, debilitating era of deflation.
The central bank said it had inflated the economy by aggressively buying longer-term bonds and doubling its government bond holdings in two years. The bank said it would aim to create a robust 2 percent inflation rate “at the earliest possible time.”
Some economists were cautious, though. The central bank’s giant purchases of government debt could eventually be seen by investors as enabling runaway public spending, quashing confidence that Japan would ever pare its already sky-high public debt. They also said it could also drive up long-term interest rates.
Others argue that rising prices, once stoked, can be hard to control, a fear related to memories of Japan’s bubble economy of the 1980s and the subsequent painful collapse.
In a statement detailing the new measures, the bank said it would buy longer-term government bonds, lengthening the average maturity of its holdings to seven years from three years and expanding Japan’s monetary base to 270 trillion yen by March 2015.
Under that plan, the bank will buy about 7 trillion yen in bonds each month, equivalent to over 1 percent of its gross domestic product, which is almost twice the bond purchases of the United States Federal Reserve Bank.
Highlights of story 2:
The Economic Effects of 9/11:
A Retrospective Assessment
September 27, 2002
International Capital Flows and the Dollar
While international trade plays an important role in the U.S. economy, it is not the only role played by international forces. A characteristic of the economic
expansions of the 1980s and 1990s was the large net inflow of foreign capital to the United States. During the late 1990s, this net inflow furnished between one-third and one-half of the U.S. net saving. In times of international crisis and uncertainty, foreign capital has often sought refuge in the United States. This time, however, the United States is the battle ground. Even though there was no panic selling of dollar-denominated assets after 9/11, it would appear that there was a short run decline in the net purchase of U.S. assets by foreigners. This was clearly over by mid-October.
However, this may be due to timely action of the Federal Reserve, which restored confidence in the smooth functioning of the nation’s payments system, action supporting the dollar in international financial markets by the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank, among others, and interest rate cuts by key central banks in support of similar cuts by the Federal Reserve. [[aprxmtly. page] CRS-3]
Prior to 9/11, the slowdown in the U.S. economy already was being transmitted to other economies through trade and investment channels, particularly through a sharp decline in U.S. imports of high-technology components from Asian suppliers.
The aftershocks of the terrorist attacks were felt immediately in foreign equity markets, in tourism and travel, in consumer attitudes, and in temporary capital flight from the United States. Central banking authorities worldwide reacted by injecting liquidity into their financial systems.
Still, the downturn in business conditions became more generalized, and the world has had to rely on China and the United States – the only two major economies to register significant growth – to pull itself out of the recession. By and large, however, the sharp immediate drop in stock values, airline travel, and general consumer confidence was temporary. After a few months, most began to turn upward again, but what recovery has occurred has been fragile and difficult to sustain.
The recession, along with increased government spending for the antiterror campaign, contributed to rising federal debt in the United States and other nations.
Combined with a weakening dollar that pushed up the exchange value of the yen, Euro, Chinese renminbi, and other currencies, central governments intervened to bolster the value of the dollar by purchasing more U.S. debt instruments. A side effect of this activity is that, despite Japan’s weak economy, its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities continue to rise ($321.0 billion by May 2002). China also has become a major foreign holder ($80.9 billion) of U.S. debt. [[apr. page] CRS-19]
The Bank of Japan intervened in foreign currency markets on five instances between September 11 and September 27 by buying dollars to stop the rise in the value of the yen. These efforts were undermined partially by
Japanese firms that were repatriating some U.S. holdings to shore up their
cash balances to meet financial reporting deadlines on September 30.
37[suprscrpt.] [[page] CRS-25]
Since 9/11, in particular, stock market values in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, and Japan have tended to move in tandem with those in the United States (as measured by the S&P 500). [[apr. page] CRS-19]
Looking to the Future
In the aftermath of 9/11, it appears that the international economy has currently become a one-locomotive world. Only United States – with some help from China – has had the size and strength to provide the economic stimulus to world economies necessary to help pull them out of the global recession. Japan and Western Europe remained coupled to the U.S. business cycle and have remained dependent on exports for economic recovery rather than relying upon domestic fiscal and monetary policies. The limited recovery in their domestic sectors has been too weak and unsteady to counter the global downturn. For U.S. policymakers, therefore, actions to restore health to the American economy also may determine global economic conditions. In this sense, foreign and domestic economic interests coincide. [[apr. page] CRS-22]
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Friday, April 5, 2013
Monday, August 27, 2012
Google Search Results :A Little Bit About What Is Really Going On
Once the computer programs are put in place, you have to understand, computers and the programs are what is running it.
If a calculator is programmed to add 2 + 2 = 4, then even if you do not like that the answer is 4, there is not much sense in laying blame on the producer or manufacturer of the calculator for not being neutral. A hypothetical situation arises, where we need a calculator to figure out food distribution to hundreds of disadvantaged people, and we needed the results of the calculator to say 2 + 2 = 5, or 3, to make the less food reach more people, 2 sets of food trucks reaches 5 villages instead of 4, which would be more 'neutral', and the 1 village left out would not complain. There is not but so much 'magical' workings that can be done to make the calculator, or computer, spell out something that is not going to be there on baseline science and technology.
In similar method, Google search results, or anyone else's search results, Yahoo, MSN, Baidu, etc., works like an extended calculator, in varying degrees and aspects.
One of the big problems computer search result users are having, is that their input or search query, does not always respond to an output, or search result, that is in line with what they are expecting, or have a tolerance for.
So what happens, is often times, the computer user, gets emotionally upset at the search engine, and in this 'natural' process of being upset, starts pointing fingers at, Google, Yahoo, ..., Baidu, etc. And when this happens, start looking towards the 'people' behind the development of the search engine.
Jumping past all the programming technology that goes into search engines, and voicing complaints at the people in the company, could arise due to an assumption that would seem to fall in line with a chain of logic. Logic would hold, that if Google for example, can have a safe search, and a moderately safe search to restrict query results [which by the way do not work 100% of the time], that when safe search is turned off, and a set of results is requested, that the results should minimally be confined to what is remotely asked for by the original query.
Which brings us to:
Issue number 1 [many people have taken up with Google search], which is why results that have nothing to do with what is asked, show up on users computer screens;
and,
Issue number 2 [many people have taken up with Google search], 'monopoly' and 'neutrality', as to why Google query results patch users in to other Google services, so it seems.
One of the things going on that cause the situation, which has its goods and bads, is people taking advantage of tags; when they build their website, they have a burning desire to make public and make its way up the Google search rankings. They take advantage of SEO, or search engine optimization techniques, to make their site, no matter what the content is, seen by as many Internet users as possible inclusive of query results.
For the time being, there really isn't a law, that we can rely on, which says, 'if your website does not contain content which your tags, labels, or meta tags read, you are engaging in an illegal activity'.
There are out there, website builders are trying to tap in on answering the question like, - How to make millions on my website -, - How to increase my website traffic -, - How to become ranked high on Google search engine results - , and so forth, and implement techniques they read from magazines, and online advertisements and sources that want you to download a book on the subject that costs $40, etc.
Amongst what happens is, a website on the subject of the color blue, has inserted in it search tags on yellow, if the website builder thinks it will make more money. A site on men, include tags on women, a site on images for transportation include tags for pets, and many other outrageous greedy schemes. Essentially, the programming of the computers, and the calculators for query results, are being taken advantage of.
Of course efforts are being made by Google and search engines to decipher when their search engine is being 'gimmicked', but, with the amount of material and information being uploaded every second, it is tough to get it perfect, especially at the instant new information gets into cyberspace.
In the underpinning, another very probable cause for unwanted query results is, slack, a lot of it, regarding decency laws in the United States.
To this day, in Japan, there is still much censorship. It is much more difficult to cut through the obstacles to obtain materials that were censored decades ago in Japan, today, than equivalent material in the United States, and many 'Western' countries, whether that be violence, political movements, etc.
What used to have people penalized by the law, in the U.S., even 20 years ago, is now a tool to make money, and even advocated by some as something that all should take advantage of and 'cash in on'.
If you really want a search engine that will do exactly as you say, then the alternative is always there, to build your own.
Insofar a search engine, such as Google, directing users to other tools sponsored by the same, at some point, it is almost 'natural' for computers to behave in this manner. An analog, is metric tools are going to be more easily compatible with other metric tools, car parts made in Detroit interchangeable with other car parts built in Detroit. Google Internet tools mesh with other Google Internet tools.
Remember when the Internet became accessible to PCs at your house a couple of decades ago, some search queries would result in hundreds or thousands of results that were in other languages, or websites that were in other languages, and with no translation tool right there, the results most of the time were not what folks in the U.S. were looking for.
A hypothetical example, someone that speaks only English wants to get a 100 word summary of the economy of China. The person types in the search query box, summary of China economy. If using Google or Yahoo designed for the U.S., a report in a popular U.S. magazine will probably result in the PBS, Wikipedia, and '.com' sites that have China and economy in the url name. This is what the searcher in this case is looking for. Now if the same person typed the same query into a search engine designed for Chinese users, especially in Chinese, Mandarin, or language of vernacular, the results might be a 1000 results in the Mandarin language. Try the same search in Chinese or Mandarin, using the Baidu search engine, if you can get the characters in the query box, and see what results; the answer is, you get sites in the results as if you were in China that are geared for audiences there, results like, en.cnki.com.cn, china.org.cn, website urls that end in '.cn', and website nomenclatures that are catchy in China, but to most average mainstream Americans there is barely any recognition of what the symbolic meanings of the website urls are.
Thereat, at some point, the English language set Google search engine, is designed to cater to English language users in the U.S., which, you might find appreciative because, after all, the way it was 20 years ago, if you have 5 minutes to turn in your report and you just got started, do you really want to sift through 5000 websites in Mandarin to find 3 paragraphs in English?
And now some complain about monopoly.
The situation of, the monopoly has to be broken up, is reminiscent, from an engineers' standpoint, when the 'Cabbage Patch' dolls were popular to the point that safety and political issues came up; here it is now, Google search and related Internet tools that Google provides, needs a committee to take up government time. Maybe it does, as a viable need based on calculations. In other views, why does the scenario even need to come up, if, for instance, the coin-toss of destiny had most of the Internet users in the United States, use the Chinese Internet search engine Baidu, instead? If millions of Internet users in the U.S. were using Baidu a day or a minute, instead of Google, spelling it out, then the uproar over what seems like Google monopolies would not exist; and, as it stands now, most Internet users have a choice of what Internet search engine they want to use, just like what doll they want to buy their child 25 years ago, or what station on television they want to watch their action prime time show on 20 years ago, when they were limited to ABC, NBC, or CBS, and if there was anything else, it was hard to see clearly.
What it is not reminiscent of, is the monopoly to break up the conglomerates like AT&T and Bell.
Facebook, is another example; does Facebook have a monopoly on 'social-networking sites' just because it is popular, does the government need to gather at some high powered meeting to discuss fairness and a breakup of the monopoly of social networking; a few years ago, for some of us, the last time we logged in on a social networking site, MySpace, was the big one; it is one way one day, another way another day. How preposterous would it have looked if there was a meeting of the heavyweights to break up the MySpace monopoly, then a few weeks later Facebook makes its advent in the popularity polls? If you really want things your way, then a route to get it, is to study the computer science until you know how to build your own search engines and social networking sites, and place them on the Internet, and use those. In conclusion, let us direct our energies, efforts, time, and dollars, on efforts that even have the possibility of making a difference, and will make a difference.
Background of the situation, a firm in the field of website translation, says in its video, only 27% of Internet users are using the English language.
Concerns over Google monopoly over competition, is only a concern to the world, the small world, of English speaking users, obviously some disillusionment over what the monopoly really are on a worldwide basis.
Another statistic, found in another website, is on the language most commonly used on the Internet, the end arrival about the same. Today, as in these past 2 or 3 years, right after English language, Chinese language users are up in the millions, almost 445 million, see internetworldstats.com . 350 million users for all other languages that is not on the statistics chart, 600 million users from the languages after English and Chinese, 1 billion comprised of English and Chinese, and 350 million from the other languages group, were the statistics in 2010, numbers which are probably still growing, out of this total, only about 540 million are English language users, roughly, 540 million divided by 2 billion, 27%.
Why worry but so much about a Google monopoly?; how about making sure that information that is being said about the U.S.A. is accurate and representative, on the other 70 something percent. Sure, Google can be used in other languages.
If a calculator is programmed to add 2 + 2 = 4, then even if you do not like that the answer is 4, there is not much sense in laying blame on the producer or manufacturer of the calculator for not being neutral. A hypothetical situation arises, where we need a calculator to figure out food distribution to hundreds of disadvantaged people, and we needed the results of the calculator to say 2 + 2 = 5, or 3, to make the less food reach more people, 2 sets of food trucks reaches 5 villages instead of 4, which would be more 'neutral', and the 1 village left out would not complain. There is not but so much 'magical' workings that can be done to make the calculator, or computer, spell out something that is not going to be there on baseline science and technology.
In similar method, Google search results, or anyone else's search results, Yahoo, MSN, Baidu, etc., works like an extended calculator, in varying degrees and aspects.
One of the big problems computer search result users are having, is that their input or search query, does not always respond to an output, or search result, that is in line with what they are expecting, or have a tolerance for.
So what happens, is often times, the computer user, gets emotionally upset at the search engine, and in this 'natural' process of being upset, starts pointing fingers at, Google, Yahoo, ..., Baidu, etc. And when this happens, start looking towards the 'people' behind the development of the search engine.
Jumping past all the programming technology that goes into search engines, and voicing complaints at the people in the company, could arise due to an assumption that would seem to fall in line with a chain of logic. Logic would hold, that if Google for example, can have a safe search, and a moderately safe search to restrict query results [which by the way do not work 100% of the time], that when safe search is turned off, and a set of results is requested, that the results should minimally be confined to what is remotely asked for by the original query.
Which brings us to:
Issue number 1 [many people have taken up with Google search], which is why results that have nothing to do with what is asked, show up on users computer screens;
and,
Issue number 2 [many people have taken up with Google search], 'monopoly' and 'neutrality', as to why Google query results patch users in to other Google services, so it seems.
One of the things going on that cause the situation, which has its goods and bads, is people taking advantage of tags; when they build their website, they have a burning desire to make public and make its way up the Google search rankings. They take advantage of SEO, or search engine optimization techniques, to make their site, no matter what the content is, seen by as many Internet users as possible inclusive of query results.
For the time being, there really isn't a law, that we can rely on, which says, 'if your website does not contain content which your tags, labels, or meta tags read, you are engaging in an illegal activity'.
There are out there, website builders are trying to tap in on answering the question like, - How to make millions on my website -, - How to increase my website traffic -, - How to become ranked high on Google search engine results - , and so forth, and implement techniques they read from magazines, and online advertisements and sources that want you to download a book on the subject that costs $40, etc.
Amongst what happens is, a website on the subject of the color blue, has inserted in it search tags on yellow, if the website builder thinks it will make more money. A site on men, include tags on women, a site on images for transportation include tags for pets, and many other outrageous greedy schemes. Essentially, the programming of the computers, and the calculators for query results, are being taken advantage of.
Of course efforts are being made by Google and search engines to decipher when their search engine is being 'gimmicked', but, with the amount of material and information being uploaded every second, it is tough to get it perfect, especially at the instant new information gets into cyberspace.
In the underpinning, another very probable cause for unwanted query results is, slack, a lot of it, regarding decency laws in the United States.
To this day, in Japan, there is still much censorship. It is much more difficult to cut through the obstacles to obtain materials that were censored decades ago in Japan, today, than equivalent material in the United States, and many 'Western' countries, whether that be violence, political movements, etc.
What used to have people penalized by the law, in the U.S., even 20 years ago, is now a tool to make money, and even advocated by some as something that all should take advantage of and 'cash in on'.
If you really want a search engine that will do exactly as you say, then the alternative is always there, to build your own.
Insofar a search engine, such as Google, directing users to other tools sponsored by the same, at some point, it is almost 'natural' for computers to behave in this manner. An analog, is metric tools are going to be more easily compatible with other metric tools, car parts made in Detroit interchangeable with other car parts built in Detroit. Google Internet tools mesh with other Google Internet tools.
Remember when the Internet became accessible to PCs at your house a couple of decades ago, some search queries would result in hundreds or thousands of results that were in other languages, or websites that were in other languages, and with no translation tool right there, the results most of the time were not what folks in the U.S. were looking for.
A hypothetical example, someone that speaks only English wants to get a 100 word summary of the economy of China. The person types in the search query box, summary of China economy. If using Google or Yahoo designed for the U.S., a report in a popular U.S. magazine will probably result in the PBS, Wikipedia, and '.com' sites that have China and economy in the url name. This is what the searcher in this case is looking for. Now if the same person typed the same query into a search engine designed for Chinese users, especially in Chinese, Mandarin, or language of vernacular, the results might be a 1000 results in the Mandarin language. Try the same search in Chinese or Mandarin, using the Baidu search engine, if you can get the characters in the query box, and see what results; the answer is, you get sites in the results as if you were in China that are geared for audiences there, results like, en.cnki.com.cn, china.org.cn, website urls that end in '.cn', and website nomenclatures that are catchy in China, but to most average mainstream Americans there is barely any recognition of what the symbolic meanings of the website urls are.
Thereat, at some point, the English language set Google search engine, is designed to cater to English language users in the U.S., which, you might find appreciative because, after all, the way it was 20 years ago, if you have 5 minutes to turn in your report and you just got started, do you really want to sift through 5000 websites in Mandarin to find 3 paragraphs in English?
And now some complain about monopoly.
The situation of, the monopoly has to be broken up, is reminiscent, from an engineers' standpoint, when the 'Cabbage Patch' dolls were popular to the point that safety and political issues came up; here it is now, Google search and related Internet tools that Google provides, needs a committee to take up government time. Maybe it does, as a viable need based on calculations. In other views, why does the scenario even need to come up, if, for instance, the coin-toss of destiny had most of the Internet users in the United States, use the Chinese Internet search engine Baidu, instead? If millions of Internet users in the U.S. were using Baidu a day or a minute, instead of Google, spelling it out, then the uproar over what seems like Google monopolies would not exist; and, as it stands now, most Internet users have a choice of what Internet search engine they want to use, just like what doll they want to buy their child 25 years ago, or what station on television they want to watch their action prime time show on 20 years ago, when they were limited to ABC, NBC, or CBS, and if there was anything else, it was hard to see clearly.
What it is not reminiscent of, is the monopoly to break up the conglomerates like AT&T and Bell.
Facebook, is another example; does Facebook have a monopoly on 'social-networking sites' just because it is popular, does the government need to gather at some high powered meeting to discuss fairness and a breakup of the monopoly of social networking; a few years ago, for some of us, the last time we logged in on a social networking site, MySpace, was the big one; it is one way one day, another way another day. How preposterous would it have looked if there was a meeting of the heavyweights to break up the MySpace monopoly, then a few weeks later Facebook makes its advent in the popularity polls? If you really want things your way, then a route to get it, is to study the computer science until you know how to build your own search engines and social networking sites, and place them on the Internet, and use those. In conclusion, let us direct our energies, efforts, time, and dollars, on efforts that even have the possibility of making a difference, and will make a difference.
Background of the situation, a firm in the field of website translation, says in its video, only 27% of Internet users are using the English language.
Concerns over Google monopoly over competition, is only a concern to the world, the small world, of English speaking users, obviously some disillusionment over what the monopoly really are on a worldwide basis.
Another statistic, found in another website, is on the language most commonly used on the Internet, the end arrival about the same. Today, as in these past 2 or 3 years, right after English language, Chinese language users are up in the millions, almost 445 million, see internetworldstats.com . 350 million users for all other languages that is not on the statistics chart, 600 million users from the languages after English and Chinese, 1 billion comprised of English and Chinese, and 350 million from the other languages group, were the statistics in 2010, numbers which are probably still growing, out of this total, only about 540 million are English language users, roughly, 540 million divided by 2 billion, 27%.
Why worry but so much about a Google monopoly?; how about making sure that information that is being said about the U.S.A. is accurate and representative, on the other 70 something percent. Sure, Google can be used in other languages.
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