Happy Halloween. Let¡¯s talk about something really scary: elections in the United States and Japan.

I say scary because these countries are the No. 1 and No. 3 largest economies in the world, not to mention representative democracies considered too big to fail. Yet the way things are going is truly frightening.

Let¡¯s start with election campaigns in the U.S., since they are probably very familiar and fresh to readers: