Hisashi Kitahara of the Daily Yomiuri says: “There are growing voices in Japan calling for the government to print money as a trump card to end deflation. The man who touched off the arguments was Prof. Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University, the recipient of the 2001 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. The biggest problem Japan is saddled with is lack of demand, but banks are not carrying out their primary function of acting as a financial medium because of the problem of bad loans. Given such a situation, those in favor printing money cite as their main argument that by doing so the government would increase spending and expand effective demand. Keio University Prof. Eisuke Sakakibara has proposed that the government take such a step only once and issue 40 trillion yen to 50 trillion yen to boost its financial resources.” Further: “If we look back at history, there were instances in which the government issued bills...”