Is Japan Bouncing Back?

Japan's new Prime Minister, Abe, is aggressively trying to stimulate the Japanese economy and it looks as if "Abenomics" might be working.

The article: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24012225

Vocabulary to help you understand the article:

to bounce back - if you drop a rubber ball, it will bounce.  If something bounces back, it was doing well, started doing poorly, but has begun doing well again.

to stimulate the economy - to make the economy more active and to show more growth.

to revise - to correct, to bring something up to date.

annual - yearly.

to spur growth - to stimulate or motivate growth.  To make something grow faster. A spur is literally something a cowboy uses to make a horse run faster:

stagnation - if you leave a container of water just sitting around for a few days, it becomes stagnant.  If something like water stagnates, it doesn't move or change and it becomes bad tasting and unhealthful.  An economy that doesn't grow becomes stagnant.

aggressive - very active, forcefully active.

fueled optimism of a recovery - caused a positive belief that recovery (a good economy) can happen.

to invest - to place money in a company to help the company develop and make more money for the investors.

trickling down - if something trickles down, it slowly moves down like rain drops rolling down a window.  So when economists talk about money trickling down the economy, they mean that the rich build businesses and make money, but this money slowly makes its way 'downward' to the rest of society.  This was Ronald Reagan's economic policy - some believed it worked and others didn't.

the move is key to -  the move is important to, is central to.

welfare costs - money the government provides to those who have a hard time surviving without help.

domestic demand - if you raise taxes, you'll cut the amount of money people have to buy stuff, this will 'hurt demand' - demand will drop...meaning people will not want to buy as much stuff.  Economics is so tricky.  Domestic means in your own country. The opposite of domestic would be international.

to derail something -  a train or subway runs on rails.  If it derails, it can't run any more.  So if recovery gets derailed, the recovery stops.

public works spending - so economists are saying that the Japanese people are buying a lot of stuff and the government is spending a lot of money creating stuff in Japan, so even with a tax the recovery should continue.

a boost - increase.

the bid - a proposal, a plan.

refurbishing - fixing up and making them nicer.

to derive something - to get something.

sentiment - feeling.