Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 index surged Thursday past the record it set in 1989 before its financial bubble burst, ushering in an era of faltering growth, Ednews informs referring to AP.
The index closed Thursday at 39,098.68, up 2.2%. Its previous record was 38,915.87, set on Dec. 29, 1989. So now it is back to where it was 34 years ago.
That was more than a generation ago at the height of Japan’s post-war boom. But this time around, the economy is in recession and nobody’s talking about a bubble. Preliminary measures of exports, manufacturing, services and other indicators released Thursday suggested continued weakening.
The market sank after hitting its 1989 peak, as banks wrote off some 100 trillion yen in bad debts. Share prices remained well below the record for many years — dipping below 7,000 at one point before a series of market-boosting measures championed by the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2013 began nudging them higher.
