Energy Efficiency

2010 may well prove to be the beginning of the end, where governments can no longer prop up banks and businesses that depend on growth, will see profit margins fall as the banks up their interest rates.

How the banks do it is although they are not allowed to charge high interest rates (part of the condition of government guaranteeing their borrowing power stability), what they are doing is charging fees for setting facilities in place, reviweing these facilities every 3 months, charging for attendance of bank management attending these review meetings and – in a blatant rip off – forcing businesses to obtain ‘qualified external advice’ from ‘mates’ who run the businesses that – no coincidence – are prefered by the banks; aka ‘jobs for the boys’.

If it wasn’t for resources, Australia would be in a real pickle, as consecutive governments have allowed our local industries collapse and jobs (and sometimes profits a la James Hardie) to go off shore.

So is Australia considered a strong financial risk say compared to Japan … the answer is no. In the Guide to Energy Efficient House Design (I wrote in 2001) I cited that while Australia sold of old growth forests as wood chip earning some $100 million, we imported over $1 billion a year in magazines and treated paper, mostly from Japan.

So how is the economic powerhouse of Japan faring, the world leader in car manufacture. Not good; homeless people have more than tripled in the last few years, although Japan has been in recession for 20 years now. The same thing the Americans and other countries are doing to ‘correct’ the economy, the Japanese have done with no positive gain hence the number of homeless.

An example of how many once successful Japanese now live is typified in what was once temporary accommodation at a place like the Capsule Hotel Shinjuku 510, which opened nearly two decades ago; the hotel’s tiny plastic cubicles offered a night’s refuge to salarymen who had missed the last train home.

Now the hotel Shinjuku 510′s capsules (about 2.2 metres long and 1.6 metres wide and about 1.2 metres high) have become the last step before homelessness while Japan endures its worst recession since World War II. Once-booming exporters laid off workers en masse in 2009 as the global economic crisis pushed down demand. Many of the newly unemployed, forced from their company-sponsored housing or unable to make rent, have become homeless.

The capsule hotels are cheaper than an appartment, but at about $850 a month, its not that good, but in the cold weather, better than the streets. If an affluent country like Japan finds itself unable to cope financially, how will Australia?

Japan has a unemployment rate of  5.2 % and poverty rate over 15% (one of the highest among industrialized nations). When I was last in Japan (the only time; for Expo 1970), even then the homeless were obvious, many actually sleeping in the Australian pavilion which had sheep skin carpet on the floors.

While we have a more temperate climate, as the number of homeless rise, it will be the built up areas and cities that will have the highest concentrations and with it, increased violence as with the homeless in America.