アメリカ国債の金利上昇；ファイナンシャルタイムズから
とうとう、アメリカ経済が悪化しそうだ。
この記事の続きに何が書いてあるのだろうか？
| Lex: US economy Published: October 16 2005 19:34 | Last updated: October 16 2005 19:34 
A shiver of uncertainty is back. After shrugging off the Federal Reserve's interest rate rises for more than a year, financial conditions in the US have started to tighten. Since early September, the US stock market is down modestly. The yield on 10-year Treasuries has risen from 4 per cent to about 4.5 per cent. Credit spreads have inched wider in recent weeks. And the dollar has strengthened. |
The rest of this article is for FT.com subscribers only
天龍八部
- 昨日、天龍八部の最終回が放送された。全部で40回のﾄﾞﾗﾏで、中国や台湾で大ヒットしたそうだ。20億円かけて中国雲南省にセットを作ったという。戦いのシーンは、大軍を実際に撮影していた。空中を飛ぶ技や、手を触れずに相手をやっつける技を持っている。11世紀末の中国の物語だ。とてもおもしろかった。娯楽作品として、凄いと思う。
- 中国のテレビ各局で軒並みNO.1視聴率を記録！台湾ではテレビ史上最高の視聴率を樹立した傑作中の傑作。
- だそうだ。
こんなドラマを日本で作ったら、いくらお金がかかるのだろうか。
人件費や物価が安い中国だからできたと思う。3つの因縁を持つ3人の主人公が、戦いに巻き込まれる。そして、純愛あり、陰謀ありの凄いストーリー展開で、目が離せない。
ケーブルテレビで放送されていたが、DVDやビデオにもなっているらしい。
- マクザム
- 天龍八部 DVD-BOX 1
- マクザム
- 天龍八部 DVD-BOX 2
- ビデオメーカー
- 天龍八部(1)(字)
- ビデオメーカー
- 天龍八部(1)(吹)
- 金 庸, 土屋 文子, 岡崎 由美
- 天龍八部〈2〉王子受難
- 金 庸, 土屋 文子, 岡崎 由美
- 天龍八部〈第1巻〉剣仙伝説
- 金 庸, 土屋 文子, 岡崎 由美
- 天龍八部〈3〉運命の激流
- 金 庸, 土屋 文子, 岡崎 由美
- 天龍八部〈4〉行路茫々
- 金 庸, 土屋 文子, 岡崎 由美
- 天龍八部〈5〉草原の王国
- 金 庸, 土屋 文子, 岡崎 由美
- 天龍八部〈6〉天山奇遇
- 金 庸, 土屋 文子, 岡崎 由美
- 天龍八部〈7〉激闘少林寺
- 金 庸, 土屋 文子, 岡崎 由美
- 天龍八部〈8〉雁門悲歌
新生銀行関連ニュース
不動産融資強化“勝ち組”目指す
 住友信託銀行・森田豊社長 |
住友信託はきょう１４日にも、ファースト社の全株式を米投資ファンドのローンスターから約１３００億円で買い取る契約を結ぶ。メガバンクが中小企業向け融資に力を入れるなか、住信はファースト社を買収することで小口の不動産関連融資を一気に広げ、収益力を向上させる。
ファースト社は昭和５６年に創業した旧日本長期信用銀行（現・新生銀行）系のノンバンク。旧長銀が平成１０年に経営破（は）綻（たん）。経営を引き継いだ新生銀行が１３年、「ファースト社は実質的に債務超過」として東京地裁にファースト社の会社更生法適用を申請した。
 ファーストクレジットを買収する住友信託銀行（顔写真は同行の森田豊社長） |
「この件に関しては、ファースト社の主力行の新生銀が、取引先であるファースト社の法的処理を申し立てたケースとして、金融界に大きな波紋を広げた」（金融アナリスト）。
背景には、新生銀が、旧長銀から引き継いだ貸出債権が２割以上目減りした場合、同行が政府に買い戻しを要求できるという瑕疵（かし）担保特約（行使期限１５年３月まで）を持っていたためで、新生銀が再建計画に応じると、この特約が認められなくなる可能性が高かったことがある。
「外資系として生まれ変わった新生銀の利益優先主義が、ファースト社の破綻の引き金を引き、金融界の非難の対象となった」（同）という。
ファースト社は１４年にローンスターが１０００億円超で買収し、１５年に更生手続きを終了した。１６年３月期に黒字に転換し、前期の最終利益は５９億円だった。
ファンドがこぞって不動産を買い漁り、首都圏の地価に回復傾向がみえ始めるなか、独立独歩を貫く信託の雄、住信がついに動き始めた。
ZAKZAK 2005/10/14
ファイナンシャルタイムズの為替情報
アメリカの貿易赤字発表により、ドル高一服。 だが、日銀の金融政策に変更がなかったため、円安ドル高の傾向は不変。
Dollar’s rally fades on trade fears The dollar staged a retreat against European currencies on Wednesday as the support initially provided by the hawkish tone from the Federal Reserve’s latest minutes faded. “The minutes were consistent with recent Fed rhetoric that had suggested the Fed was being driven more by inflation concerns, rather than the growth outlook,” said David Woo of Barclays Capital” Foreign exchange dealers were left with with no doubt that the Fed will continue to tighten interest rates after officials indicated more concern about the inflationary effect of higher oil prices over the impact on growth. “Inflationary pressures are being barely contained (and), the Fed has made it quite clear that the likely peak in the monetary cycle is once again shrouded in uncertainty,” said Simon Derrick of the Bank of New York. The dollar strengthened to $1.1952 early in the European session but retreated to $1.2027 as traders’ attention started to switch to US trade figures due today. “If it looks like the deficit is growing, Asian central banks are likely to lose appetite to continue amassing dollars,” said Adrian Foster, head of FX strategy at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. “We see the stand-off between the large trade deficit and the US interest rate advantage as the reason for the range bound euro/dollar trend of recent months.” Against the Swiss franc, the dollar touched SFr1.2949 but did not challenge resistance at SFr1.2965 and retreated to SFr1.2868, about 0.2 per cent weaker. The Bank of Japan announced an unchanged monetary policy stance after a two-day meeting and released its monthly report that indicated some modest improvement in the economy. Some dealers expect Japan to end its monetary policy of quantative easing – which floods the banking system with excess funds – in the new fiscal year, but officials appeared to be pushing back expectations of the timing of any change after the BoJ deputy governor said current policy was appropriate and core consumer price inflation had not yet turned positive. “The contrast between the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan only serves to highlight the continued widening of interest rate differentials that will encourage further dollar strength against the yen,” said Derek Halpenny, senior currency economist at the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi. The dollar touched a seventeen-month high at Y114.72 but remained rangebound above Y114, trading at Y114.34 late in the european session. Traders said if the dollar established above Y114, the next target at the Y115.00 level could present a significant obstacle. The euro continued to trade in a narrow range against the yen for a second session, hovering round Y137.64. Sterling fell to $1.7390 early in the European session but rallied to $1.7504, about 0.4 per cent stronger. Expectations of a UK rate cut in November were dented by a hawkish speech by Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England. Mr King said policymakers were surprised by both the slowdown in consumer spending and the rate at which inflation had picked-up. Earnings and unemployment figures failed to provide any impetus for sterling, which remained rangebound against the euro at £0.6862. Large short positions have been built against sterling and traders said if the euro could maintain a hold above £0.6848, the next target would be £0.6930. South Africa’s central bank is expected to keep interest rates unchanged at 7 per cent today, so attention will focus on the tone of any comments after the recent rise in inflation. Although the rand’s yield advantage over the dollar is being eroded, higher precious metals prices continue to provide support. The rand weakened 0.8 per cent to R6.5642. Analysts at Calyon said the outlook for high yielding currencies was set to become more differentiated given the effects from commodity prices (oil and non-oil) and the upward move in US long bond yields. The Canadian dollar’s main driver lately has been energy prices, with recent declines in natural gas prices translating into weakness for the loonie, which traded half a cent weaker at C$1.1698. The Australian dollar traded 0.3 per cent stronger at $0.7545 but traders reported speculative long positions being closed. The Czech koruna traded at 29.595 against the euro as the currency failed to benefit from an improvement in the outlook for growth after the finance ministry upgraded 2005 and 2006 GDP forecasts. |
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ファイナンシャルタイムズの日本株式市場速報
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ファイナンシャルタイムズの記事を下から逆に読むと
日本の経常黒字は八月１５％減少。 日本国債相場下落によって、今年初め１．２％弱だった日本国債の金利は、１．５％超へ上昇した。
政府系金融機関の貸し出しが激減した。 一方、民間金融機関の貸し出しは２ヶ月連続で増加し、九月については対前年比０．４％増加。
Japan bank lending up for second month Lending by Japanese banks increased for the second straight month, according to one closely watched measure published on Thursday, suggesting that the August rise - the first in seven years - was not a one-off occurrence. The 0.4 per cent year-on-year rise in bank lending in September came after adjustments for special factors such as write-offs and securitisations. This measure is regarded as a better indicator of the overall trend than the unadjusted figures – which showed lending in September continuing to decline but at a slower pace. Analysts have differed on whether the recent improvement in the lending figures indicate primarily that banks are more willing to lend now that they have cleared up their balance sheets, or that businesses are more eager to borrow. Nonetheless Thursday’s data is generally regarded as a sign Japan’s economy has taken another step out of its deflationary trap. Lehman Brothers said on Thursday: “Today’s data are encouraging and suggest that an end to credit contraction may be getting closer.” Some analysts were cautious about Thursday’s announcement, pointing out, for example, that lending by public financial institutions, which was not included, had been falling sharply. Barclays Capital, the fixed-income specialist, said higher lending could boost prices by increasing the money supply. It added: “The negative impact on the bond market would be huge.” Falling bond prices have already pushed up the yield on Japanese 10-year government bonds to above 1.5 per cent from below 1.2 per cent earlier in the year. Separately, government figures on Thursday showed a 15.6 per cent fall in Japan’s current account surplus in August. The value of exports increased by 8.8 per cent, but imports rose 24.1 per cent – boosted by high oil prices. |
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>日経新聞インターネット版より
財務省が13日発表した9月の対内・対外証券投資（指定報告機関ベース）によると、外国人投資家は日本株を1兆6692億円買い越した。景気回復や好調な企業業績が背景にあり、9月の衆院選で与党が圧勝し改革への期待が投資増に結びついた面もある。
買い越しが1兆円を超えるのは3カ月連続。企業収益が好調で設備投資も活発になっていることに加え、省エネ対策の進展で原油高への抵抗力が強いことも注目材料になっていると指摘されている。
一方、日本の投資家は外国の中長期債券を9302億円買い越した。投資信託による買い越しが4318億円に上った。有利な資産運用先を求めて米国債などを購入しているとみられる。外国株も2097億円の買い越し。東欧、ロシア、インドの株の購入が増えている。 (12:23)
ファイナンシャルタイムズの日本株上昇についての記事
三井不動産株が６．４％も高くなったそうだ。
Real estate leads gains in Tokyo stocks Japanese stocks rose again on Wednesday morning, building on the momentum of the benchmark Nikkei index’s rapid increase on Tuesday. The Nikkei 225 finished the morning up 0.4 per cent to 13,614.59. The Topix, which gained from the strong weighting of banking stocks within the index, rose 1.1 per cent to 1,422.01. On Tuesday the Nikkei rose at its fastest pace in a year, on strong machinery orders and positive analyst reports for some key stocks. On Wednesday morning the most rapid increases were largely in the same sectors as on Tuesday. Real estate jumped 4.1 per cent, continuing to benefit from UBS’s recent decision to raise its target price for a number of companies – citing strong demand for central Tokyo office space. Mitsui Fudosan, Japan’s biggest real estate company and one of the businesses cited by UBS, leapt 6.4 per cent to Y1,797. Japan’s big banks also continued to benefit from Goldman Sachs’ decision to raise its assessment of the banks to “attractive”. Mitsubishi UFJ, the world’s biggest bank by assets, climbed 1.4 per cent to Y1,470,000. Mizuho, Japan’s second biggest banking group, rose 2.5 per cent to Y739,000. Other domestic sectors performed well. Retailing rose 2.1 per cent, and insurance jumped 3.7 per cent. Nipponkoa, Japan’s largest general insurer, rose 2.3 per cent. |
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economist誌日本特集のすべての見出し
トップ部分のみ無料で、webで見ることができる。残りは、有料subscriptionか、
立ち読みでどうぞ。
でも、ステレオタイプな内容でしかなく、たいしたことは書かれていなかった。
トップ記事の中に、false dawnということばがでてくるが、エモット氏が使っている意味は、ジョン･グレイ教授の著書とはまったく別の意味であることを、付け加えておく。economist誌日本特集のトップ無料記事部分
From The Economist print edition
Get article background
NO COUNTRY in modern history has moved so swiftly from worldwide adulation to dismissal or even contempt as did Japan, in a process that began more or less as the temple bells were tolling in the new year of 1990. In the 15 years that followed, amid crashing stock- and property markets, mountains of dud debt, scores of corruption scandals, vast government deficits and stagnant economic growth, Japan mutated from being a giver of lessons to a recipient of lectures, all of which offered recipes for its reform and revival. Those lectures, although received politely by a newly self-deprecatory Japanese elite, seemed to be ignored. Now, however, the time for lectures is over. Japan is back. It is being reformed. It is reviving.
Really? The very unJapanese event that took place on September 11th—a snap general election called on a policy issue and won in spectacular fashion by the reformist prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi—has changed perceptions of Japan as an irredeemable dud, but not much. After all, the case for cynicism is compelling.
There have been several false dawns during those 15 dismal years, most notably in 1996-98 when an incipient recovery turned into a fresh recession and produced both a banking crisis and an apparent enthusiasm for reform. Since then, Japan has suffered a price deflation that has still not come to an end. Since 2001 it has had a prime minister, that same Mr Koizumi, who has talked a lot about reform but whose real achievements remain rather hard to get your arms around. Moreover, the OECD recently rated Japan's potential rate of GDP growth for the rest of this decade at a mere 1.3% a year, on the basis of poor productivity growth and a population that is shrinking and ageing. Politics didn't even come into it.
But remember. During the 1980s, when adulation (or fear) of Japan was at its peak, many observers made the mistake of assuming that because some things in the country plainly worked extremely well, everything did, so everything must be worth emulating and the trend must be ever upwards. That is why your present author named a book he published in 1989 “The Sun Also Sets”. Japan's sun does not only rise, the book argued; trends can also bring about their own downfall. Since 1990, the opposite mistake has been made: just because some things have gone badly wrong, so everything has been assumed to be wrong, in perpetuity or at least pending a revolution. Hence the somewhat self-indulgent title of this survey: the Japanese sun does not only set, either. It also rises, and looks likely to do so from now on.
For the case for greater optimism is also strong. It is not based on any notion that Mr Koizumi's victory represents the start of radical change. Nor is it intended to suggest that privatisation of the postal savings system—the reform issue around which September's election was fought—will somehow magically turn Japan from a sloth economy to a growth one, for it won't. Rather, it is based on the view that Mr Koizumi's victory is the culmination of a long period of incremental change, bringing welcome confirmation that that change is not likely to be reversed.
Even after his landslide win, it is not inevitable that Mr Koizumi will get his way, for his party's rules stipulate that he will have merely a year as leader to exploit his new mandate. Still, there is a chance that the party will extend his term, but also a likelihood that any successor will follow the Koizumi script. This would mean that the size and role of the Japanese state will shrink, in a slow but remorseless process over the next decade or so. That will gradually help improve the public finances, which are in a mess; gradually help reduce the financial distortions that have arisen from the state's role in banking; and gradually help reform politics, which had become dependent on state cash and power.
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Gradually: that could be Japan's watchword. The country has not had a revolution, nor has it gone through the “shock therapy” of reform that Margaret Thatcher deployed in Britain in the 1980s or that some central European countries tried in the 1990s, and it is not likely to go through that now. For this is not a country of revolutions, but rather one that tends to follow a course faithfully and steadily once it has been agreed upon and set.
For the past decade, although the main approach to the country's immediate macroeconomic and financial woes has been one of muddling through and hoping for the best, there has been a gradual process of reform, of setting new courses and parameters for behaviour. This has consisted of an accumulation of many small changes—some in politics, but also in financial regulation, in corporate law, in public opinion, in capital markets, in corporate mores. The two big questions have been, first, whether that process will endure; and, second, whether the burdens of the past—debt, deflation, corruption, labour protection—will continue to overwhelm the benefits that come from those changes, or whether Japan might soon be in a position to grow and develop again as a normal country might.
September's election answered the first question. But to answer that second question, it is no good speculating about politics, nor expecting the politicians to produce radical, invigorating reforms. They have neither the power nor the capability for that. The place to look is not in the fancy headlines of politics but deep in the fabric of Japan's economy and society. And although there may not be one single reason to expect a transformation, there may well be one single field of data that currently holds the clue as to whether economic recovery is going to be sustainable in the longer term, as well as exemplifying some of the biggest changes that have taken place. That field is employment and wages.
The Japan of old was known as the country of “lifetime employment”, a somewhat exaggerated but still important notion that in return for loyalty and flexibility big employers typically offered a lifetime commitment to their workers, with associated company unions, generous fringe benefits and pay rising according to age and seniority. That also made for a fairly egalitarian society. Shock therapy would have shattered the lifetime notion, producing a big rise in unemployment. So it never happened: most big companies chose to maintain their commitment, asking workers to take pay cuts and waive bonuses rather than lose their jobs, but ceased to hire new graduates. Less than half as many new graduates were hired in 2003 as in 1997.
But also, helped by changes to employment law, firms found flexibility in another way: by hiring part-timers and others on temporary contracts, both at far lower cost than for regular workers. In 1990 such “non-regular” workers made up 18.8% of the labour force. Earlier this year, that figure reached 30%, which in Japan's 65m-strong labour force means roughly 20m people. Those workers are predominantly women, the young and the fairly low-skilled. Since 2003, the law has allowed contracts to be counted as temporary, and thus cheap, for up to three years. The use of contract workers remains forbidden in some sectors that employ lots of people, including health care and construction, but has gradually become permitted almost everywhere else. Canon, for example, a successful electronics firm that still firmly maintains a lifetime commitment for its “core” workers, employs fully 70% of its Japanese factory staff on such “non-regular” terms, up from 50% five years ago and 10% a decade ago, according to Fujio Mitarai, Canon's president.
This new labour flexibility has contributed to a boom in company profits and to the paying down of debt. In 1998 workers' pay equalled about 73% of corporate earnings. By 2004 the proportion had dropped to 64%. Other factors helped too, most notably a big rise in exports to China in 2002-04, which revitalised manufacturers of all kinds, whether metal-bashers or precision engineers, and a series of bank nationalisations and mergers in 1998-2004 during which bad loans worth trillions of yen came good or were written off.
As a result, the gigantic pile of dud corporate debt for which Japan became notorious in the late 1990s is now a lot smaller: from a peak of more than ¥43 trillion in 2001, non-performing loans held by banks have more than halved to less than ¥20 trillion (see chart 2). The number is now also thought to be more or less accurate, whereas until 2001 or so official figures for non-performing loans were appallingly and deliberately underestimated.
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Labour flexibility came at a price, however. Falling wages boosted profits but also weakened demand. In recent years, consumption has been sustained only by households choosing to save less of their incomes: the Japan that in the 1980s was reputed to be a nation of savers now has a household saving rate of merely 5% of disposable income, one-third of its level in 1990. New jobs have been created, but as 2005 began most were still part-time or on temporary contracts. Part-time workers in Japan get on average less than half the full-time hourly wage. The lowlier contract workers, such as shelf-stackers in convenience stores, can expect ¥600-800 per hour, which is well below the British legal minimum wage. Little wonder that an economic commentator, Takuro Morinaga, topped the bestseller charts in 2003-04 with a book on how to live on ¥3m a year. So much for the idea of Japan as a high-cost country.
As long as wages were falling and the new employment being created was the cheaper, less secure sort, there was little chance that economic growth could become truly sustainable. The cost-reduction and flexibility may have been a necessary condition of eventual recovery, but could not itself bring it about. Rather as in America during the Great Depression, declining demand has helped to neutralise improvements taking place elsewhere in the economy. Moreover, there are limits to what export-led growth, the great hope of 2002-04, can achieve, given Japan's already large current-account surplus (3.6% of GDP), the chance that the yen will strengthen against the dollar and the danger of slower demand in Japan's top foreign markets, China and America.
Since April, however, the employment data have shown something new and more promising: full-time employment is growing faster than the part-time sort for the first time in a decade, and although some of that growth is still in full-time contract work, regular employment is rising too. Wages are also rising, at their fastest rate since 1998 (which mainly means they are simply rising, at last), and bonuses are again being paid.
It is still early days—too early to tell how strong this rise in employment and incomes will prove to be. Probably, its effect will be gradual: people may try to rebuild their savings rather than spending all their gains, competition from low-cost China and India will help limit wage gains, and firms scarred by the past 15 years are unlikely to embark upon an investment and hiring binge. What this development does suggest, though, is that the last of the three excesses that have burdened the economy since 1990—excess corporate debt, excess capacity and excess labour—may now finally be on the point of elimination.
Elimination is probably too strong a word, for whether something is excessive is a subjective question. The ratio of debt to operating profits for large and medium-sized firms is down to levels typical in the 1980s, ie, less than 10%, compared with 15-20% at the peak in 1999. Smaller firms still hold debt of nearly 15% of operating profits, but that too is down from over 20% in 1999. Excess capacity is a particularly subjective matter: the capacity-utilisation rate reported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is back up to 1992 levels, and businessmen's perceptions, as reported in the Bank of Japan's regular Tankan survey, are that excess capacity has largely disappeared.
The important issues now, though, revolve around risk, stability and incentives. During the 1990s, although Japan experienced only stagnation rather than collapse, there was always a risk that collapse might come. With corporate debt cleaned up and banks reformed, that risk has gone. Banks certainly think so: their lending has recently started to expand again for the first time since 1998. The alternative now seems to be either slow growth or faster growth, not growth or slump. Moreover, an economy that relies on increases in private spending, by households and by companies, is likely to follow a more stable path than one that depends solely on export demand or public spending. What matters most, though, is how that spending will be used. And that is a question of whether the incentives governing such spending have changed: the incentives for companies to waste the money or use it well, and the incentives for politicians and bureaucrats to abuse it, steal it or otherwise distort it.
That is where the many other small changes come in. A simple way to understand what happened to Japan in the 1980s and 1990s is that a country with many strengths, especially a high average level of education, formidable technology and powerful social co-ordination within companies, came to lose its basic disciplines and incentives, particularly in the late 1980s when it experienced one of the biggest asset booms in world history. Flushed with success and with seemingly costless capital, companies expanded and diversified recklessly. Banks lent regardless of risk or business viability. Bureaucrats and politicians resisted calls for deregulation that could have extended competition and encouraged innovation, because they did not think it was necessary. Interest groups anyway blocked change, chiefly by bribing politicians. The mass media were largely suborned by the political and corporate establishment.
The collapse of the stock- and property booms after 1990 and the ensuing recession might have been expected to shake all this up. It didn't, for two main reasons. The first was that the principal economic response to the slump, ie, massive public-works spending, further enriched some pressure groups and many politicians, making them even more able to resist change, and an expansionary monetary policy deadened the price mechanism that ought to have imposed discipline. The second was that for a mixture of social and psychological reasons, neither bureaucrats nor companies chose to admit what was really happening.
A 15-year gradual work-off of the excesses inherited from the 1980s would not have been what most analysts would have recommended or even expected in 1990, whether they were rude foreign lecturers or polite Japanese. And it has been a more painful period than any visits limited to prosperous Tokyo would suggest. Provincial cities and rural areas have suffered greatly, with shuttered-up streets and rising levels of poverty. Suicides have soared, up more than 50% since 1990 to 34,500 in 2003. By Japan's standards, crime has risen too, though it remains low in comparison with America and most of western Europe. Still, compared with what might have happened in most other developed countries had they gone through the same prolonged experience, Japanese society has remained remarkably stable.
Yet although society has been stable, the appearance of policy paralysis is misleading. Actually, bit by bit, step by step, a great deal has been changed, in what may come to look with hindsight like a sort of revolution by stealth. The changes are still continuing and being battled over, so it is too soon to judge whether that word will in the end be justified. But what this revolution-in-progress has already done is to alter many of the incentives surrounding political and corporate behaviour.
It needed to, because in 1985-95 Japanese companies proved incredibly bad at using their own money—or rather, their shareholders' money. Neither commercial law nor the courts helped the shareholders' cause very much. Banks supposedly provided the discipline in the system through their ability to intervene in their big customers' affairs when things went wrong, but such interventions became rarer as the asset bubble inflated, and then rarer still once the banks got into at least as much trouble as their customers. Then, banks kept alive what became known as “zombie” companies for fear of acknowledging their bad loans, of creating unemployment or of upsetting the whole collective applecart.
This used to be called financial socialism, which was meant as a compliment. That time has long gone. Now, a joke is circulating in Tokyo about Chinese students on a course there. Someone asks them why they spend so much time with other Chinese rather than with Japanese students. Their answer: because we are afraid the Japanese might teach us communism. The way things are going, the joke might soon become obsolete.
Japan is at last ready to surprise the world by how well it does, not how badly, writes Bill Emmott, editor of The Economist