Japan hits a speed bump

Japan's rampant stockmarket growth has slowed to a crawl this year.

"The excitement Japan's fresh start once aroused has long since ebbed," says the FT. The Nikkei took off like a rocket in 2012 when Abenomics', the government's attempt to end years of stagnation and deflation, was launched.But it has been treading water for much of this year.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe decided to raise the consumption tax, the equivalent of VAT, in April in order to boost government revenue and help cut borrowing. The move restored some fiscal credibility: the budget deficit has declined to a five-year low of 6% of GDP.

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Andrew Van Sickle
Editor, MoneyWeek

Andrew is the editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He grew up in Vienna and studied at the University of St Andrews, where he gained a first-class MA in geography & international relations.

After graduating he began to contribute to the foreign page of The Week and soon afterwards joined MoneyWeek at its inception in October 2000. He helped Merryn Somerset Webb establish it as Britain’s best-selling financial magazine, contributing to every section of the publication and specialising in macroeconomics and stockmarkets, before going part-time.

His freelance projects have included a 2009 relaunch of The Pharma Letter, where he covered corporate news and political developments in the German pharmaceuticals market for two years, and a multiyear stint as deputy editor of the Barclays account at Redwood, a marketing agency.

Andrew has been editing MoneyWeek since 2018, and continues to specialise in investment and news in German-speaking countries owing to his fluent command of the language.