From Publishers Weekly
Financial journalist Tett asks why the economic engine that achieved phenomenal growth for Japan between 1953 and 1970 has been stalled since 1990, with 2003 marking the fifth consecutive year of deflation. Puzzled by the persistent stagnation and dissatisfied with prevailing macroeconomic explanations, Tett has taken an intriguing alternate route to investigate what has gone wrong: she focuses on the history of the Long Term Credit Bank (LTCB) as it evolved from financing industrial customers during the boom years to expanding its portfolio with real estate loans in the 1980s and recent attempts to reinvent itself as Shinsei Bank after being purchased by a U.S. consortium in 2000. The twists and turns of the fascinating LTCB saga are cultural and political eye-openers, but Tett also thinks that the problems she found in the bank are symptomatic of Japan's economy as a whole. She argues that one consequence of Japan's reliance on old ways of doing business was the proliferation of nonperforming loans, burdening the banking system to the tune of more than a trillion dollars in the 1990s; she sees the meltdown of the LTCB and the need to put it up for sale as an inevitable result of failure to get tough with rafts of deadbeat borrowers. When the determinedly entrepreneurial U.S. consortium took over the LTCB with a vision of transforming it into a viable commercial bank, it soon discovered a vast number of hidden bad loans along with unexpected resistance to the consortium's new business strategies. Her candid assessment in this lively volume is certain to stir debate since she points an accusatory finger at what she characterizes as paralyzing traditions of consensus thinking, harmony, hierarchy, insularity and resistance to change, especially if the proposed changes originate with non-Japanese. Illus. not seen by PW.Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
In the 1980s, Japan's heady financial growth spurt had everyone wondering whether they were going to take over the world, economically speaking. That period created one of the world's largest stock and real estate bubbles ever, and the subsequent fallout has created enormous levels of bad debt that have threatened time and again to collapse their banking system. Rather than giving another overview of Japan's 13-year economic downturn, this book focuses on the history of one specific bank, the Long Term Credit Bank, which typifies the problem. This character-driven story shows how the protectionism and chronic denial of wrongdoing that stem from Japan's cultural avoidance of public shame have allowed nearly $1 trillion in bad debts to fester for all this time. Tett follows LTCB through its collapse in 1998, when an American company stepped in and tried to introduce Wall Street-style management technique, which did not go over well. This focus on one particular bank gives a microcosmic view of Japan's business ethic and a not particularly positive view of their future. David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
International Herald Tribune
"Classic tale of East meets West ... Tett makes (it) as intriguing in business as it is in war or romance."
Clyde Prestowitz, President - Economic Strategy Institute, author of Rogue Nation
"A superb, insightful book ... Written with wit and enthusiasm, this tale is both a fun read and a must read."
Kent Calder, Director, Edwin O. Reischauer Center for East Asian Studies, SAIS, Washington, D.C., and former Special Advisor to the US Ambassador to Japan, 1997-2001
"... goes to the heart of Japan's current predicament - and the possibilities of change. (A) path-breaking new book."
Laura Tyson, Dean, London Business School, and former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors for President Clinton
"A riveting account ... and an insightful analysis of the factors behind Japan's prolonged economic malaise."
Book Description
For more than a decade, Japan's dismal economy -- which has bounced from deflationary collapse to fitful recovery and back to collapse -- has been the biggest obstacle to economic growth. Why has the world's second largest economy been unable to save itself? Why has a country, whose financial might in the 1980s was the most feared force on the globe, become the sick man of the world economy? Why has the industrial transformation once called the Japanese Miracle frozen into the Japanese malaise?
Saving the Sun answers these questions by telling the story of Long Term Credit Bank, one of the nation's most respected financial institutions, and its attempts to transform itself into a Western-style bank. Through the stories of three extraordinary men, former Financial Times Tokyo bureau chief Gillian Tett brings to life the bank's long struggle to regain its financial health. In the process, she shines a light into the secretive world of Japanese banking where business is done in sex bars and gangsters lurk behind the scenes. And, in a fast-paced narrative, Tett chronicles the internal conflicts between reform-minded and tradition-bound factions within the bank, as well as the powerful and protective Japanese bureaucracy.
Filled with dramatic scenes involving some of the most important figures and institutions in international finance -- -Paul Volcker, Lawrence Summers, John Reed, Goldman Sachs, UBS, and CSFB -- Saving the Sun charts the growing confusion between a government eager to revive the economy but unwilling to accept the necessary compromises and the Western bankers (profiled here for the first time) who too openly scorned Japanese capitalism and its paramount interest in social harmony over pure profit.
What emerges is the first viable explanation of what caused Japan to stumble from such economic heights -- readers will finally understand what has hobbled that country. But what also emerges is the realization that a profound rift still exists between Japan and the rest of the world. Though Long Term Credit Bank's transformation into Shinsei bank has been a rousing success in financial terms, the Japanese press, government, and people have all but turned against the idea of American-style capitalism. Indeed, instead of reforming Japan, the banking crisis may have convinced ordinary Japanese, more than ever before, that they must go it alone.
About the Author
Gillian Tett was trained as a social anthropologist but became a journalist while doing fieldwork in Soviet Central Asia during the of communism in Russia. Since that time she has risen through the ranks of the Financial Times, holding positions on its economics desk before becoming the bureau chief in Japan. She now lives in London.
Home
