Tag Archives: economics

Aging Japan: Unclaimed burial urns pile up in Japan amid fraying social ties

By Kaori Kaneko

YOKOSUKA, Japan (Reuters) – Unclaimed urns containing ashes of the dead are piling up by the thousands across Japan, creating storage headaches and reflecting fraying family ties and economic pressures in a rapidly aging nation.

The identities of the dead, cremated at public expense, are usually known. But in most cases, relatives either refuse or don’t respond to requests to collect their remains. Burials can be costly and time-consuming, a burden on family members who may hardly know the deceased relative.

“When I die, though I have only 150,000 yen ($1,340), will you cremate me and put me in a pauper’s grave? I have no one to collect my remains,” said a note left by a man in his 70s in Yokosuka, south of Tokyo, who died in 2015 and whose urn was later buried at a local temple.

The abandoned remains highlight social, economic and demographic changes in Japan, where more elderly live on welfare and families are more scattered, weakening traditional family bonds and obligations.

It is a problem that is likely to grow, experts say; deaths in Japan are projected to rise from 1.33 million a year to 1.67 million by 2040, even as the overall population drops.

Yokosuka was so overwhelmed with unclaimed urns that it ran out of space in a 300-year-old charnel house that was about to collapse. It combined ashes of different people into a much smaller number of urns that it now stores in a hillside cave, with about 50 newer urns accumulating at the city office.

“Space to store them is running out,” said Hitomi Nakamura, an official in Saitama city, north of Tokyo, where the number of unclaimed urns has grown sharply the last few years to more than 1,700.

“Many elderly people are living on welfare,” he added, “and many of them may be estranged from their families.”

With Japanese wages barely growing, and many children of the elderly living on pensions themselves, managing death costs, including arranging for their burial, can be a burden.

A traditional funeral, including food, drinks and gifts for guests, and hiring a Buddhist monk to chant sutras, can cost 2 million yen ($17,800) or more, industry sources say.

New businesses have sprung up offering no-frills funerals for $2,000 to $4,000, but other costs can add up, including the hundreds of dollars it may cost to bury the urn at a temple or cemetery.

POOR ELDERLY

There are more elderly poor than in years past, some of whom cannot afford their own funerals. Nearly 3 percent of elderly were on welfare in 2015, almost double the rate two decades earlier, government statistics show. Just over half of all Japanese on welfare are 65 or older.

“There are more people who die alone, with no one to look after cremated remains because of weaker family relationships,” said Hisako Makimura, a visiting professor of sociology at Kansai University.

In decades past, it was not uncommon for three generations of family to live together. But experts say that as Japan’s economy has changed, couples have fewer children, and people tend to move farther from home for work, among other factors.

Nearly 6,000 urns have accumulated in the southern city of Fukuoka, while Osaka, in western Japan, buried the remains of 2,366 people in a communal grave this year after no one claimed them after one or two years.

The number of Japanese age 65 and older will swell from 28 percent of the population to 36 percent by 2040, according to the government-backed National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

“Families and communities used to play roles of taking care of deceased people,” Makimura said. “But the burden on local governments will likely grow as their involvement in dealing with the dead increases.”

(Click for graphic on Japan’s aging population: http://tmsnrt.rs/2HKy1i7)

‘SO RELIEVED’

In Yokosuka, more elderly are dying without leaving funeral instructions or information about relatives.

City officials comb through their homes and census registries, and try to contact family members through the mail, often to no avail.

“The dead are ordinary citizens. It could happen to anyone,” said Kazuyuki Kitami, a city official. “These bones are warning those of us who are alive that we are poorly prepared.”

Noticing that many unclaimed remains were from poor elderly people, Yokosuka in 2015 started an “ending plan support” service for low-income residents with no immediate family members.

Individuals pay at least a fifth of the 250,000 yen cremation and burial costs, with the government covering the rest. Dozens have signed up, and in May the city made similar services available to anyone.

Sumitaka Haraguchi sits on a bed in a room of a nursing home where he lives during an interview with Reuters in Yokosuka, Japan September 11, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

“I feel so relieved,” said Sumitaka Horiguchi, 80, after signing up for the service and ensuring he will be buried at a local temple.

Horiguchi never married and hasn’t seen his three step-siblings in many years, so he worried what would happen to his remains when he died.

“My days have changed,” he said from his nursing home. “I feel calm.”

(Corrects spelling of man’s name in 23rd and 24th paragraphs to “Horiguchi” not “Haraguchi”.)

(Reporting by Kaori Kaneko, Kim Kyung-Hoon and Kwiyeon Ha; Editing by Malcolm Foster and Gerry Doyle)

Federal Reserve swimming against global tide of easier rates

Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen speaks at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University

By Jamie McGeever

LONDON (Reuters) – Rarely has the world’s most important and powerful central bank been so isolated.

As the Federal Reserve prepares the ground for another interest rate hike, most other central banks are moving in the opposite direction. And the divergence is widening.

No fewer than 53 central banks have eased monetary policy since the start of last year, almost all by lowering rates. Indeed, the pace of policy easing nearly everywhere is accelerating even as the Fed nears its second hike of the cycle.

This raises several questions. If the global recovery is firmly rooted, why are so many central banks cutting rates? Can the global economy handle rising U.S. rates, and perhaps a stronger dollar that follows? Will the Fed be forced – again – to slow the pace of tightening or even abandon it altogether?

“I can’t ever remember a situation when we’ve seen anything like this before,” said Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank in New York and a former International Monetary Fund economist.

“When I was at the IMF there was only one global business cycle. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it would have been impossible to imagine the kind of decoupling we have today,” he said.

The divergence can drive business costs and trade flows, lead to outsized exchange rate moves and highlight vulnerabilities in the global financial system, casting doubt on whether the world can cope with relatively higher U.S. borrowing costs and dollar.

Deflationary forces from the oil price plunge to $50 from $115 in the second half of 2014 kick-started central banks into action at the beginning of last year. Fourteen eased policy in January 2015, 11 in February and 12 in March. Denmark’s central bank cut rates four times in as many weeks.

The number of monthly rate cuts dwindled as the year progressed, troughing at three each in August and October, before the Fed delivered its first rate hike in a decade that December.

But even though oil has rebounded 75 percent from its multi-year lows, the pace of monetary easing is picking up. Twelve central banks loosened policy in March, 10 in April and 11 in May. Indeed, 11 central banks have begun easing cycles since the Fed raised rates in December.

At one level, the divergence suggests the U.S. economy is on a stronger footing than the rest of the world.

The U.S. economy is relatively closed, relying less on trade than many others. Imports and exports account for no more than 15 percent of U.S. growth, a proportion that’s more than twice that in most of the major developed and emerging economies.

Yet the Fed has already baulked at raising rates, both before and after its December move, precisely because of its fears over the global spillover effects from more tightening.

CONVERGENCE … BUT WHEN?

Financial markets and emerging economies are the main areas of concern. Both are potentially vulnerable to a rising dollar and higher U.S. bond yields that could follow from higher U.S. rates.

From mid-2014 to the end of last year the dollar rose around 25 percent against a basket of currencies, effectively a tightening of U.S. monetary policy which, according to Goldman Sachs, helped tighten U.S. financial conditions by almost 200 basis points.

There’s a view that this did more damage to the rest of the world through large-scale emerging market capital flight and China’s policy wobbles than the United States, where job growth and economic activity help up reasonably well.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development on Wednesday urged governments to boost spending to lift the world economy out of a “low-growth trap”. It said global growth will meander along at 3 percent this year, its slowest pace since the financial crisis for a second year in a row.

Global conditions, China and the dollar have featured prominently in speeches by Fed chair Janet Yellen and other Fed officials over the last six months, a clear indication they are acutely aware of the global impact of higher U.S. rates.

But with dozens of other central banks in easing mode, conditions have abated around 100 basis points since the turn of the year, helping support global asset prices and giving the Fed leeway to raise rates again.

Francesco Garzarelli, co-head of global Macro and Markets Research at Goldman Sachs, said the Fed effectively participated in the global easing cycle this year by not following up last December’s hike with another increase.

“Markets have seen the Fed stop and go twice, but eventually the hike will come, maybe in June,” he said.

Garzarelli argued that inflation would need to pick up around the world for other central banks to change course. And echoing the OECD, he said the pressure on central banks to loosen monetary policy would lessen if governments shouldered more responsibility for boosting growth via fiscal policy.

“That transition is slowly underway, and the interplay between monetary and fiscal authorities may shift market expectations,” he said.

(Editing by Jeremy Gaunt)

Clearout of Greek refugee camp should reopen economic artery

People walk through fields after they were sent out during a police operation to evacuate a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni

By Lefteris Papadimas and Angeliki Koutantou

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Greece has sent in police and bulldozers to clear out Europe’s biggest refugee camp because of the deteriorating humanitarian conditions there, but the operation should also unblock a vital artery for the ailing economy.

Greece lies at the epicenter of two of the biggest challenges facing Europe – a migration influx and a debt crisis.

The Idomeni camp, recently home to as many as 8,000 migrants and refugees, had spread out across a railway track on the Macedonian border, choking off Greece’s main rail route to the rest of Europe. It has also complicated the privatization of the country’s rail freight business, a condition of its international bailout.

Greek authorities said 2,031 refugees were removed from the makeshift camp on Tuesday and the rail tracks were fully cleared on Wednesday. But they have not said when the train link, which is vital to the freight firm TRAINOSE, will reopen.

“This should have happened a long time ago,” said Anastasios Sachpelidis, a local transporters’ association representative. The closure was “a big loss,” he said. “We lost clients, we lost money, time and our credibility.”

Heavily indebted Greece clinched a deal with international lenders in the early hours of Wednesday to unlock desperately needed new bailout loans on the condition it fulfils certain terms, including speeding up privatizations.

Athens has agreed to sell off an array of assets, including TRAINOSE and its maintenance company ROSCO. The deadline for potential investors to submit final bids was originally in April, but has been pushed back twice, and is now set for June 22.

The privatization agency has said investors needed more time to prepare their bids.

“The camp has been blocking a route of the Greek supply chain which has taken several decades to be established,” said a senior executive at an Athens-based rail freight company, who declined to be named, citing political sensitivities.

“As long as Greece’s main cargo rail conduit to Europe is closed, it is obvious that TRAINOSE’s value is falling and the company is less attractive to investors,” the executive said.

The government has not publicly said what it hopes to raise from the sale but sources close to the process said the figure was expected to be in the region of about 50 million euros ($55.7 million) for TRAINOSE and ROSCO together.

WASTELAND

More than a million people escaping poverty and war in the Middle East and beyond have entered the European Union via Greece since the beginning of last year, many of them heading north en route to Germany.

But Europe’s borders have slammed shut in a concerted effort to halt the influx and some of those left in limbo have pitched tents on muddy wasteland outside the town of Idomeni.

The makeshift camp, home mostly to Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans, sprang up four months ago. Human rights groups have raised alarm about the deteriorating conditions there, including overcrowding, poor sanitation and the risk of infection.

Many children slept in the open, scuffles broke out over food, and Macedonian forces tear-gassed migrants trying to storm past the razor-wire border fence.

“No one came here on purpose to close the railway,” said Farshad, 43, from Syria. “We are not demonstrating here. We just live on the tracks because the conditions are better.”

The rail line at the border was shut down in March due to the refugee camp. This followed a previous closure in November, when a separate group of Moroccan, Iranian and Pakistani migrants blocked traffic, demanding passage to Western Europe.

TRAINOSE is the sole provider of passenger and freight services in Greece and made a net profit of 1.47 million euros in 2014, according to its latest financial results.

Greece last month received expressions of interest in the firm from Italy’s state railways, Russian Railways (RZD) and Greek construction group GEK-Terna.

DELAYS, COSTS

When the Idomeni border was open, roughly eight freight trains ran daily back and forwards to central Europe, in total. At present, just four trains run a longer route through neighboring Bulgaria, meaning higher transport costs for Greek importers and exporters.

A train pulling 34 cars would normally cost up to 50,000 euros ($55,700) to transport a cargo into central Europe in two to three days. But the longer route is causing delays of up to 12 days, which is lifting the cost by almost 20 percent, said the executive of the Athens-based freight company.

An exporters association in northern Greece, representing some 500 businesses, said the situation at Idomeni had stunted efforts to kickstart the economy after six years of recession.

“The direct extra cost for our members have totaled about 5 million euros so far,” said the association head, Kyriakos Loufakis.

TRAINOSE’s biggest client in Greece, Chinese shipping giant China COSCO, took over the operation of two of Greece’s Piraeus port container terminals in 2009 via its Greek unit Piraeus Container Terminal (PCT).

It uses Piraeus to transport Asian products to central Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Austria and Slovakia, by sea and rail.

“Anything that obstructs this process is a problem for us,” said Tassos Vamvakidis, the commercial manager of PCT.

Greece’s state railways company OSE threw up a barbed wire fence parallel to the railway tracks at Idomeni on Tuesday to prevent people moving onto the line.

But the executive of the Athens-based rail freight company said that once the camp was fully evacuated it would still take up to 10 days to fully restore rail traffic.

“We had the route closed in November, reopened and then closed again four months later. Who can assure potential suitors that this won’t happen again in July?”

($1 = 0.8976 euros)

(Reporting by Angeliki Koutantou and Lefteris Papadimas; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Pravin Char)

Michael Snyder returning to Morningside May 19th!

Michael Snyder, our go-to expert on today’s economic signs and signals will be here Thursday, May 19th. Michael will be here with hosts Jim and Lori Bakker to discuss news, updates and a closer look into what’s happening in our world.  

 

Michael Snyder is best known for his work as the publisher of  The Economic Collapse Blog. Snyder has just released a new book called The Rapture Verdict,  and is also the author of The Beginning of the End and Get Prepared Now!: Why a Great Crisis Is Coming & How you Can Survive It.

 

Michael & Meranda Snyder host The Watch: a half hour program on the PTL Television Network that is absolutely packed with news, information and teaching with a special focus on Bible prophecy. You can see The Watch on our PTL Television Network on Demand, on ROKU or Apple TV.  

 

Taping will begin on Grace Street at noon on Thursday May 19th!  We would love to have you in our studio audience!  This taping will not be live streamed, however, you can view it before it airs on TV on Roku, Apple TV and the Video On Demand section of our website.