The Weight of the Yen: How Denial Imperils America's Future and Ruins an Alliance

by R. Taggart Murphy

A provocative financial history of the last fifteen years explains how the U.S. has gone from the world's largest creditor to its largest debtor, examining the terrible costs--both economically and politically--of borrowing money from the Japanese.

Genres: Japan, Economics, History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1996

Reviews

[AC · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have nearly finished reading this -- will finish it tonight. It is a brilliant (though not an esp. quick read) discussion that ranges far beyond its title. It will explain much about the structure of Japanese society, and about global financial and monetary history from WWII till 1996 (when the book was published), including the bubble of the 1980s and the bust (on Xmas day 1989) that persists to this day. Reading the account of bust was like deja vu all over again -- the eerie similarities to what we've been going through -- though the outcomes will be profoundly different. Japan, as a creditor nation, deflated; the US, as a debtor nation, will inflate. What is also important is that many of the mistakes being made by Obama's economics team result from the mistaken belief that China is Japan. China DID engage in the same game (dubbed by Coxe the "Great Symbiosis) during the early-naughts (exporting cheap products and recycling the profits back into the US in the form of buying Govt. bonds, which kept US interest rates low, the dollar high against the home currency, and thereby financed the US consumption binge in a form of vendor-financing). But when the game was over, Japan fell on its sword, immolated the japanese household on the alter of national savings rates, endured 26 years of deflation to keep the party going for the US -- and the party going for the powers that be in Japan, which are the bureaucrats of the MOF, the Ministry of Finance --. But China will play a very different game -- and this is what Summers and Geithner et al. have yet to figure out... because China, as you are already seeing, will dump the US and invest in itself. If you have the interest, let me also recommend this stunningly brilliant book:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27...

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly excellent. I have to thank AC for recommending this book. Murphy is an eloquent and humane writer and this is evident from the introduction. His analysis of Japan weaves together economics, finance, politics, and an undertanding of the institutions and political culture of both Japan and the US, and adheres to theory as well as to common sense. It helps lay the groundwork for thinking about the comparisons flying about today between Japan (in the 80s) and China, and Japan (in the 90s) and the US.