William Pesek is an award-winning Tokyo-based journalist and author of "Japanization: What the World Can Learn from Japan's Lost Decades."
In the past 20 years, there has been an explosion of economic growth in Asia driven by remittances, the cash workers abroad send home. From Manila to New Delhi, officials have come to rely on millions of people working abroad to send money back to their families. It is a key source of hard currency to plug holes in government balance sheets and drive domestic consumption.
