Many are American, and they are buying busted real estate properties and bad loans from banks at great discounts. There are no sure bets in this world, of course. Many of the deal makers now crowding the elegant lobby of Tokyo's Imperial Hotel will lose money, even buying at less than 10 cents on the dollar, because they don't understand the local laws or hidden costs. But their timing could be right as rain.
World awaits Japan's move But pump priming is only a short-term fix.
In many ways, Japan today is entering a period of industrial restructuring comparable to what the United States went through in the 1980s. A lot is at stake for the world economy in how Japan changes. Therefore we should step back and understand the forces that have produced the world's second-largest economy and that bedevil it today. In the late 1940s, Japan's government, with the encouragement of the U.S. occupation forces, created industries to employ the people. It then told the people to save their wages in government-guaranteed accounts on which interest income would be untaxed.