The most recent industry to feel the crisis is insurance. Japan's low interest rates have bankrupted insurance companies that had guaranteed a larger return on the money people have put into pension plans. So many of these pension plans have gone under that many people have just stopped paying premiums. Last year for the first time there was a net decline in the money going into and out of pension funds. This has grave social implications because Japan's population is one of the oldest in the world.
Millions depend upon pensions to survive.
The question now is whether the banks themselves will be next. The crisis in Japan shows how quickly a capitalist economy can unravel, just when prosperity appears to have reached its peak. Millions of workers face a frightening future. Yet Japan still has modern factories, good schools, new highways and bridges, modern communications, and all the material requirements for prosperity. They wouldn't, if the working class had its own state and was in charge of organizing production to meet human need.