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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: kodiak_bull who wrote (1673)	3/15/2001 11:16:50 AM
From: Terry D	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

More on Japan - this from Bill Safire - nytimes.com March 15, 2001 ESSAY The Sinking Sun? By WILLIAM SAFIRE WASHINGTON — Stock markets are slumping because the world's second-largest economy has admitted that it is near collapse and shows no sign of knowing what to do... Yet what most concerns many institutional investors and other heavy hitters is the effect on world markets of the trauma of Japan. While our stock indexes dip toward 1998 levels, its has just gone through 1985... Japanese executives and the government they control never understood their need for competition. While the Sonys and Toyotas set world standards for innovation and marketing, the rest of Japan's companies — producing 90 percent of that nation's goods — refused to let outsiders compete. Mom-and-pop stores were protected from domestic chains; those chains were protected from overseas competition; bankers, industrialists and politicians protected one another. The consequence: productivity plunged to less than two-thirds of that in the U.S. That false protection has been ruining Japan... The paradox: Japan got into trouble by protecting its businesses from overseas competition. America can get into trouble by failing to enable its medium-size businesses to compete with giants. We should both put our trust in antitrust.