China, Japan & the Nocebo Effect
Whither China 5: No, China is not competing with India for Wall Street's attention.
On net, China continues not to import capital - the issue highlighted by the Bloomberg piece - but to export capital to the rest of the world on an unprecedented scale. It is typical of China’s model that this outflow takes the form not of private capital flows, but of official reserve accumulation and accumulation of claims by state-controlled banks.
So as far as global trade is concerned, plus ça change. China runs a huge surplus. The USA runs a huge deficit. For all the talk of rebalancing or decoupling, there is little evidence of any fundamental shift of the basic dual-pole structure of the world economy. In this schema, India is not an emerging challenger for China. As makes sense for a populous and poor developing country, for most of its history since independence, India has run trade deficits. It has imported capital.
Adam Tooze, Chartbook
Understanding Japan’s Demographic ‘Crisis’: An Alternative Perspective on Population Decline
It is important to see declining populations in developed countries for what they are: inevitable, temporary demographic transitions that incentives countries to update their traditional socio-economic systems to a modern model that was long overdue. As such, it should be seen as an opportunity, rather than an economic crisis. In any case, pushing women to make more babies does not seem like the way to go.
Roos Van Keulen, Earth.Org
The Placebo Effect’s Evil Twin
The term “nocebo effect” derives from the Latin word nocere, which translates roughly as “to harm” (as in the Hippocratic injunction, primum non nocere—first, do no harm). Whereas the better-known placebo effect is typically positive (the alleviation of pain or malaise through treatments that otherwise have no inherent therapeutic value); the nocebo effect is negative, often manifesting as headache, skin irritation, or nausea.
No surprise, then, that the nocebo effect has been called “the placebo effect’s evil twin.” It can be more formally summarized as “the occurrence of a harmful event that stems from conscious or subconscious expectations.” Or, more simply: When you expect to feel sick, you are more likely to feel sick.
Michael Bernstein, Quillette