You've heard a lot about Japan's bad debt problem. Now Lester Thurow has discovered that it also has a good debt problem. The MIT professor of Economics and Management and acclaimed author was at the CSFB investor conference in Hong Kong and remarked upon this phenomenon.
Broadly speaking, Thurow thinks that there is a whole lot of performing good debts in the economy that are causing it just as many problems as the mountains of bad debts. These largely explain why Japanese people are reluctant to spend. That's because these good debts centre on individual Japanese families possessing massive negative equity.
40% of the households in Japan have a mortgage which is substantially above...
