{"id":216283,"date":"2026-01-04T12:26:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T12:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/216283\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T12:26:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T12:26:07","slug":"japan-policy-wonks-consumed-by-debate-over-how-to-measure-fiscal-woes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/216283\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan policy wonks consumed by debate over how to measure fiscal woes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A key measure of fiscal health in Japan is losing favor, with allies of the current administration saying that the primary budget balance is all but meaningless in an inflationary environment: the wrong tool for the wrong time.<\/p>\n<p>Critics counter that ignoring the number is just a convenient way to obscure the real problem, and that the downgrading of the key statistic might ultimately damage Japan&#8217;s credibility in international markets. Some go as far as to suggest that the quiet campaign to dethrone the statistic is just a way to give Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi room to spend more money.<\/p>\n<p>This debate over an otherwise obscure figure has captivated wonks and political insiders in Japan in recent months, especially as concerns globally increase over Japan&#8217;s overall debt burden and how the new prime minister is ideologically inclined to spend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A key measure of fiscal health in Japan is losing favor, with allies of the current administration saying&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[15250,138,12625,219,23122,111,139,69,53957],"class_list":["post-216283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-budgets","tag-business","tag-debts","tag-economy","tag-japanese-economy","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sanae-takaichi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216283","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}