Shareswatch Australia

Over the last few weeks the tragic events in Japan and the political unrest in the Middle East have shown just how fragile the Australian stock market is. Investors appear ready to move quickly out of shares and shift funds to less riskier assets when they sense trouble. This suggests to me, that people don’t quite believe that the Australian economy is as robust as many market commentators would have us believe.

Lives for all us living in Japan changed from the moment the first terrifying earthquake hit off the North East coast of Japan on Friday 11th March.  We all live near fault lines and most of us live near the coast as well, therefore as the images of the disaster were shown on television I was simply lost for words – unable to process what I was seeing.

Toyota’s current recall woes have generated a range of articles about the Japanese economy as journalists rush to get some Japan flavoured content served up to their masters. But often these articles simply rehash the same tired cliches about Japan and it’s economy and don’t provide people outside Japan with a balanced view of what is really happening.

It seems that the old bubble economy stories about Japan are doing the rounds again in business journals and finance websites these days as lazy journalists try to make comparisons between infrastructure spending in Japan during the 1990′s, and the economic stimulus packages being proposed in the U.S and other countries.