by Laura Conaway

Japanese wages falling
High Frequency Economics

'This is what a depression looks like, eh?'

Carl B. Weinberg of High Frequency Economics sends a bummer note this morning."The global economic downturn is not taking any time off for summer vacation," he writes. Global credit has stopped growing, he notes, and German retail spending is looking very 1990.

But that's nothing compared to the news out of Japan, where overall pay clocked in last month as the lowest in 20 years. Cash earnings are down 7.1 percent over June 2008, as companies cut summer bonuses by 17 percent. Wages were down 2.5 percent lower than May 2008. With less money in their pockets, Weinberg writes, Japanese families will be spending less for a long while. "This is what a depression looks like, eh?" he writes.