So if the banks write that off, that will hugely affect their profitability but that's balanced by the exhortation to the Reserve Bank, to Japan's Central Bank, the Bank of Japan, to return to a zero interest rate policy and to do that for as long as is needed to create inflation. Zero interest rates, though. And the problem is that Japanese citizens still aren't borrowing. Now the rates for ordinary citizens are, of course, higher than that. So hence talk of a zero interest rate or moving at the edges to create what's called a negative interest rate, Mark.
Japan has deflation.
It's in its longest period of deflation since records were kept and when prices are falling it's extremely sensible for someone not to spend. You could get the same goods cheaper if you just wait. It has been thought in the Western World that inflation's a bad thing and that may be the case but Japan has, in the 1990s, come to the realisation that there's one thing worse than inflation and that's deflation. It's much better to be in a situation where prices are gently rising than a situation where they're gently falling as they have been in Japan for years. Peter Martin, on the other side of the looking glass there in Tokyo.