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To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (39392)	8/22/1999 3:48:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116810

''For bankers, it's the notion there's no such thing as a bad loan,'' Guynn also said, in a reminder that much of America's boom today is heavily mortgaged on tomorrow's economic dream biz.yahoo.com So why not Japanese dream, on sale now? :)

To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (39392)	8/23/1999 5:37:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116810

quote.bloomberg.com

To: Bobby Yellin who wrote (39392)	8/23/1999 5:56:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116810

Commentary Japan trips psychological switch Big bank alliance reflects new economic attitude By Bill Clifford, CBS MarketWatch Last Update: 2:31 AM ET Aug 23, 1999 NewsWatch TOKYO (CBS.MW) -- Japan is thinking big again. The prospect of a Japanese bank with assets of more than a trillion dollars, had it materialized 10 years ago, would have intimidated not only international financiers but also some national security specialists in Western capitals. But the world heaved a sigh of relief after the news that Industrial Bank of Japan, handmaiden of the country's postwar economic miracle, will partner with commercial lenders Fuji Bank and Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank. The Japanese economy has been choking on too many banks and their bad debts for too long. The more the financial sector consolidates, the sturdier the economy's recovery and the likelier it is Japan will be able to act as a locomotive for global economic growth. Timely, bold strokes like the mega-bank plan have been so absent from Tokyo for so long that the national cliche is to call the 1990s the "lost decade." Until recently, about the only optimism you could find here would be in millennial rhetoric -- very tinny stuff indeed. Yet suddenly Japan in 1999 is rediscovering its flair for grander designs. There's been a cascade of once unthinkable experimentation, often involving foreigners. Survival has made it so in many cases, but that doesn't diminish the fact. Take Nissan Motor's (NSANY: news, msgs) carpooling it with master cost-cutter Carlos Ghosn of Renault in selling a big chunk of itself to the French carmaker. Or this attitude shift: Nippon Telegraph and Telephone's (NTT: news, msgs) yielding in a bidding war to Britain's Cable & Wireless (CWP: news, msgs), the first foreign firm to win a contested takeover battle in Japan when it acquired the Japanese international carrier IDC. General Motors (GM: news, msgs) is pondering a return to manufacturing in Japan, an activity it gave up before World War II. Huh? The Japanese would have ridiculed the idea 10 years ago, when they believed American workers to be lazy, the U.S. economy unproductive and GM cars uncompetitive clunkers with steering wheels on the wrong side. Hardly a peep on that score now. The notion of GM making cars in Japan is not only imaginable to the Japanese, it's acceptable. Protests in the media against foreign industrial and financial invasions seem to be fading. Japanese business is gearing up without the gaijin, too, in imaginative ways. Rivals Hitachi (HIT: news, msgs) and NEC (NIPNY: news, msgs) have agreed to collaborate in making advanced semiconductors. Capex is finally coming back, after years of reduced expenditure on factories and machinery. Fujitsu said it'll raise its target for capital spending this year to meet rising demand for computer chips. Hitachi is readying huge sums for biotechnology. And now, if the IBJ-DKB-Fuji Bank colossus comes to pass, a real chance that Japan's sick banking sector will heal. It will anyway, even if the world's largest bank were to founder under its own weight. That's because this biggest Japanese idea yet of 1999 touches much more than just banking. It has tripped a psychological switch in the nation that big things are possible again. Sure, hiccups in the economy will persist. But the new Japanese thinking, coupled with a growing foreign participation in this market, is the best catalyst for a sustainable recovery that Japan has had in years. cbs.marketwatch.com