> So you endorsing the Japan-as-inheritor scenario here?
Nope. Read Wallerstein and Arrighi and it just seems to happen...
But you have to admire how the managers of the Japanese system have up to now handled the US marketeconomist globalgauleiters. The big "reform" bone they were going to throw them was to put a cap on deposit insurance, planned for next spring. So the Japanese treasury announced that they were _not_ going to do it (for at least two more years = more or less forever), buried in an announcement of how - in accordance with the US marketeconomists demands - they were eagerly working out the final details of the plan for a crash, mass bankruptcy, and depression ("reform"). <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A3422-2002Oct9.html> But the guy responsible for talking this way to the US marketeconomists - Takenaka - has actually managed to spook some people into believing they really are going to do something this insane. So now today there are all these panicky Japan stories. <http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/10/business/worldbusiness/10YEN.html> john mage