Raw Japan

Japan’s bulging debt

How much is too much?

When it comes to Japan’s bulging public debt, no one quite knows, but at about $75,640 for each of the country’s 127 million people, the burden is starting to worry both voters and investors. You can even see it climb in front of your eyes on an unofficial Website.

That’s why some pundits say it’s time for new Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to make some tough decisions about delaying costly spending programmes promised in the August election that vaulted
his Democratic Party to power.

But with the economy fragile and an election for parliament’s less powerful upper house less than a year away, many wonder if he will.

Support for Hatoyama’s cabinet slipped eight points to 63 percent in a Yomiuri newspaper poll this week, while 85 percent said they’d rather see some campaign pledges broken than a rise in a public debt, already headed for more than 200 percent of GDP this year.