The Japanese government needs to cut deep in spending, and that's what they have NOT been doing for the past 20 years. As long as they don't try to fix the debt problem, nothing else is going to work in the long term.
In fact, spending as a % of GDP has increased.
http://www.cato.org/blog/where-are-european-spending-cuts
There has been almost zero spending reduction in Europe. They're calling a slow-down in spending expansion, austerity, when in fact there has been no austerity.
>In fact, spending as a % of GDP has increased.
Because e.g. in Greece, GDP shrank over 30% in the last 5 years. Have you ever looked at the things a country spends its taxes on? How should it out-save it shrinkage without destroying the very infrastructure it's economy needs to flourish?
> cato.org
Cato is good PR agency, but you should not take them seriously on anything economics-related. Just look who works there, I wasn't able to find a single phd in economics there, only public relations staff (people who studied politics, sociology etc, practically no one who actually did research in any field before working there).
Sounds like a good thing to me.