> well. For that to work, one needed a financial backup
> that did not demand immediate profits, as with the
> bank-centered keiretsu system. Of course this has
> all broken down since the crash of the bubble in 1990.
Has it, though? Or is it turning into something else? Even Sony, notoriously independent of the keiretsu, is taking a bath on the Playstation 2 hardware, going after market share rather than short-term profitability. Keiretsu structures still rule the roost in East Asia, by and large.
-- Dennis