the only illusion is that they have a good fiscal policy and are willing to change. they got in this mess by having one of the least transparent lending systems

the only illusion is that they have a good fiscal policy and are willing to change. they got in this mess by having one of the least transparent lending systems, where the government "chose" winners or hid things by lending to preferred groups; does this remind you of China at all? Hence they could fake things for a while. Eventually that large budget deficit versus GDP (nearly triple the US) combined over the years with even more taxation just sucks the life out of an economy. Throw in a shrinking population and an adverse look at immigrants and its not fun. So you have their central bank playing with the quantitative easing game for nearly ten years and not getting anywhere. This is mostly because government is borrowing all the money leaving corporate investment to occur mostly as a product of spending their own profits. Japan is simply proof government cannot buy its way out of a problem, they have been trying for years. Classic money trap that certain economist love to ignore or worse claim the opposite by saying if they just went further, spent more... etc etc. Oh well, China is similar but the US is too, the difference is the US has quite a bit of immigration to take jobs the locals won't