"Pettis likens it to the US railroad boom in late the 1800s. “Most of it was very, very wasteful and the companies eventually went bankrupt. The railroads shift

"Pettis likens it to the US railroad boom in late the 1800s. “Most of it was very, very wasteful and the companies eventually went bankrupt. The railroads shifted to new owners who bought at a significant discount. That meant they could lower prices immediately,” he tells Quartz. “That’s painful, but it’s economically very efficient.” That never happened in Japan. In fact, this is why Japan’s GDP appears not to have grown in so long, says Pettis—wasteful government spending in the 1980s meant GDP “was significantly overstated.”" http://qz.com/94692/abenomics-will-fail-if-japan-doesnt-address-its-debt-problem-heres-one-way-it-should-start-doing-that/ http://qz.com/94692/abenomics-will-fail-if-japan-doesnt-addr...