Yeah.

I've been doing my part to send them as much money as I can.

Honestly though, disheartening article.

Well if you believe out inept corrupt administration, then we (the US) are not in a recession.....yeah right.....this sucks majorly.....

It doesn't seem to me that a slowdown in 'growth'
necessarily means a looming recession.

Everyone's worried about the rise in oil prices of course
and Japan relies heavily (maybe 100%?) on imports,
but she has just recently EMERGED from one recession
and gone through a period of new growth
which was probably unsustainable anyway.

One thing which IS - maybe surprisingly - worrying some people here
is the probability that the new U.S. President will be a Democrat.
Of course, most everybody will be glad to see the back of Bush,
but there is a widely held belief that the Republicans have historically been
more favorable to Japan than the Democrats, who tend to favor China.

Economics is WAY over my head,
but I do think things will be on 'pause' for a while until
oil prices settle down & said election is over.
It's no biggie.
We're all going to Hell in a handbasket anyway!

This is totally surprising, but it seems a common sense idea. Then again, I'm sure that it could be either proven or disproven by hard economic data.

Heh ...

Well, I was talking to some people about this on Saturday
and apparently I was wrong in my post above ...

Despite a year which saw the number of homeless here drop
for the first time in ten years,
and the number of college grads finding jobs rise
for the first time in a few years too,
this sub-prime loans thing is basically going to raep Japan
once the full picture emerges -
which will probably be sometime later this year.

Salarymen everywhere are checking the times of the Express trains
passing thru their local stations even as I write.

God Bless America!

F**king sub-prime! I worked in that industry for a brief while prior to my current job. The greed was unbelievable. It eminded me of teh 80's. We had sales-kids (ok, people in their 20's) all driving top of teh line BMW's...and teh top sales poeple netting over a million a year in commissions for sales of loans to brokers. A unhealthy proportion of which were stated (meaning no documentary evidence of income) loans, being originated for either property flippers or people with little hope of making payments later on. Ugh.

Tell me about it...I'm hip deep in it (I do middle office operations for a mortgage lender 'Mutual'ly known). I don't think Japan will be that affected by the subprime crisis, though. Japanese banks have far less exposure to subprime related investments than banks in the U.S. and even Europe. In fact, U.S. banks just recently asked the "The Big 3" Japanese banks to contribute a combined 15billion to a "subprime support fund", which they balked at (rightfully so).

Yeah, it seems to depend who you ask about this.
I spoke to someone else about it today,
& he said the same thing.

He's more worried about China's shift in trading partners
away from Japan and towards the USA & Europe.
He doesn't see another recession coming though,
just a continuation of this period of 'slow growth'.