>Ah, benighted Japan... just another poor, helpless economic superpower,
>with cash reserves piled higher than the Himalayas, and the most efficient
>accumulation engine in world history, and a per capita GDP 15% higher than
>the US.
But Dennis, those cash reserves are as much a sign of (present) weakness as of (past) strength - they can't invest the damn money profitably. And I'm not talking U.S. profit rates, but something even in the mid-single digits. There were estimates that the rate of return on new capital investment in Japan in the mid-80s was negative - certainly the explosion of financial gimmickry (zai-teku) and the flood of foreign investment testified to low, if not negative, profit rates. For sure, the talk of collapse so fashionable in the English-language press is way overdone, but you can't run an accumulation engine on sub-5% profit rates.
Doug