Mr. Patrick, I want to know what you think is at stake here. I want to read this quote from the prime minister. Potentially, it could be that serious, though I think that that s a rather melodramatic statement, frankly. Nonetheless, if Japan were to slide into a serious recession and depression, on top of what s happening in the rest of Asia, I think the worldwide implications would be severe. I wanted to come back to what Mike Mochizuki just said.
Deregulation is certainly a very important part of the story.
It s a long run fix. It doesn t give you a quick solution to these problems. But both have to be implemented and implemented quickly, as Mike suggested. Well, the bad loan problem is exacerbated by the loans to Korea and other Asian countries, though I suspect that there s not going to be a great series of defaults like we had in Latin America in the late 1970's. But the bad loan problem is primarily domestic in origin and in size and in nature in Japan, and it s been festering from the early 1990's.