Next a reply to Dennis, and then about the yakuza recession thing. Dennis writes:
> Well, this is the great question facing Japan and East Asia: knuckle under
> to the US, trash the industrial base, and turn Matsushita into Enron,
> or... or what, precisely? One of East Asia's real geopolitical weaknesses
> is, the credit superstructure is run by the keiretsu, which don't have a
> huge interest in creating an EU-style superstate.
The US doesn't want the yen as a major currency in Asia. It isn't the keiretsu. Besides , whose keireretsu are you talking about? And how are the keiretsu going to create a EU-style superstate out of Korea(s), China, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan?
> Will East Asia act?
More like: what can it do to stop the US now? Will Europeans suddenly become champions of fair globalization? Even if the US doesn't get WTO-sanctioned liberalization of 'finance', it's going to try and get what it wants: increased ownership of the E. Asian economies, number one client state Japan included.
Next the :
< http://www.feer.com > The Yakuza Recession
>he spoke with a veteran investment >banker and colleague who
>also happened to be friends with Paul >O'Neill, the United States
>Treasury Secretary. The economist, an >American, and the investment
>banker, also American, were discussing >a matter long the subject of
>innuendo: Japanese organized crime->the yakuza-and its role in the
>bad-debt crisis that is primarily >responsible for keeping Japan in
>recession.
This is just more 'othering' of Japan to fit western preconceptions and fantasies. What in the fuck does this guy really know about Japan? What the fuck does O'Neill know about Japan? The Japanese I know complain about the yakuza being the ones going out and collecting the loans--they collect for the Japanese version of The Money Store. I've heard of collection agencies hired by banks having yakuza-types as their enforcers. I've also heard about others hiring yakuza to protect them from the collectors, but does that mean the yakuza caused the recession and deflation? I think a completely overvalued yen had far more to do with it.
My own hunch (ituiting here, but it seems to be working so far) is that the really awful loans were written off with enthusiasm back in the 90s when the government made huge amounts of money available to do so. These were the loans that allowed people to buy real estate on the idea that it would keep going up. When the bubble burst, it didn't. Sure the yakuza were in on these sorts of deals. Money for nothing, the basis of a lot of American capitalism, too apparently.
But what I think now is that the loans that everyone is now contesting (are they bad, and if they are, why do the vultures like Carlyle want them so badly?) go not so much to shady real estate deals but to thousands of small and medium size companies. The wealth to be squeezed from this is enormous, even if the ambition is just to be in on the first wave of loan clearings and grabbing them up and re-selling them (which Carlyle specializes in).
Yakuza? Next they'll be saying the Jews.
Maybe I'm completely wrong. Maybe this isn't just more propaganda put in the western press to feed the ambitions of Carlyle and Ripplewood. But if it were true, why would these guys want this stuff, even at .10 cents on the dollar?
IMO FEER=total bullshit
Charles Jannuzi