"As for Japan, merely stabilising its debt to GDP ratio would take a fiscal consolidation in the order of 13 percentage points of GDP. While Japan has so far avoided the crunch by relying on high domestic savings, those will diminish rapidly as the population ages. But foreign investors, faced with debt ot GDP ratios of more than 200 per cent, would likely demand far higher interest rates than Japanese governments have paid to date, potentially strangling economic growth"
Source: It ain't over yet: global financial crisis lingers on
By Henry Ergas
The Weekend Australian
September 28-29, 2013, page 16