Japan's Debt disaster and China's (Non)Rebalancing: Stormy seas ahead?

Extract

My salary will be reduced 10% on April 1. Are students bitching about my lousy teaching? Have I been less productive on the research front? Less willing to shoulder my share of administrative burdens? All this could be true - or not - but has nothing to do with my pay cut. From slacker to Nobel Prize winner, every one of my colleagues at the University of Tsukuba is seeing his or her salary fall. As are all professors at all of Japan's national universities. And, indeed, everyone in Japan who is paid, directly or indirectly, by the Japanese tax payer - or, more precisely, paid by all the borrowing the Japanese government has been doing since taxes now cover less than half the Japanese government's expenses.