Analysts typically read the words in EPA's monthly economic wrap-up much as they would tea leaves in an effort to understand the government's thinking and, consequently, to divine the future direction of economic policy. The June analysis, which was leaked five days before its scheduled June 20 release date, describes the movement toward a self-sustaining recovery as becoming pronounced. At the time, EPA officials denied that such language was tantamount to declaring that a recovery was underway. That job fell to another group, an EPA panel of seven academics chaired by veteran Tokyo International University Professor Miyohei Shinohara. When the Economic Dates Examination Committee met June 19, it tentatively determined that the economy had hit bottom in April 1999 and thereby had completed the latest of 12 official business cycles that began with a four-month downturn in 1951.
Western analysts have a different take on Japan's latest business cycle.
In the conventional view popular in the United States, the GDP numbers imply that another recession began only three months after the EPA panel's designated endpoint. More generally, many foreign experts believe that the world's second-largest economy has endured nearly a decade of stagnation, arguably starting in late 1990. The official position is that the economy was in a recovery mode between October 1993 and March 1997. The dating of recessions and expansions in Japan is based in part on EPA's indices of leading, coincident and lagging indicators. Revisions announced June 15 just ahead of the committee meeting reversed for a second time the conclusions drawn from the lagging indicators for February and March.