This book examines in detail the timely area of Japanese banking and investment activities in the United States, and offers a clear picture of both the causes of the recent growth of foreign investment activity and the consequences of this trend for American companies, households, and government agencies. Peter S. Rose argues that multiple factors have shaped the growing roles played by Japanese banks in the U.S. financial system and by Japanese investors in the U.S. economy, but remains optimistic that this is not necessarily a cause for alarm. Rose provides a detailed look at nearly every aspect of Japan's involvement in the U.S. financial sector, as well as offering a useful overview of the banking and financial system of Japan. Among the causes of Japanese expansion that Rose discusses are the rapid appreciation of the Japanese yen in international markets, Japan's large trade surpluses with the U.S., the high personal savings rate of the Japanese, periodically depressed U.S. stock prices, and the low barriers to entry into most U.S. markets. Also fully detailed are the consequences of possible reductions in Japanese financial activity, which could be felt in the U.S. through higher domestic interest rates, a reduction in the creation of new jobs, rising unemployment, reduced availability of long-term capital, and a slackening in the growth of U.S. output. This unique work will be an important reference tool for professionals in the banking, finance, and securities industries, for public policy makers and bank regulatory agencies, and for students and researchers of international banking and finance.

A single Japanese company, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone, is worth more than IBM, AT&T, General Motors and G.E. combined. All of the world's largest banks are Japanese. These and other fascinating facts detail a subject vital to America.

Japan is only one of many industrialized economies to suffer a financial crisis in the past 15 years, but it has suffered the most from its crisis--as measured in lost output and investment opportunities, and in the direct costs of clean-up. Comparing the response of Japanese policy in the 1990s to that of US monetary and financial policy to the American Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s sheds light on the reasons for this outcome. This volume was created by bringing together several leading academics from the United States and Japan--plus former senior policymakers from both countries--to discuss the challenges to Japanese financial and monetary policy in the 1990s. The papers address in turn both the monetary and financial aspects of the crisis, and the discussants bring together broad themes across the two countries' experiences. As the papers in this Special Report demonstrate, while the Japanese government's policy response to its banking crisis in the 1990s was slow in comparison to that of the US government a decade earlier, the underlying dynamics were similar. A combination of mismanaged partial deregulation and regulatory forebearance gave rise to the crisis and allowed it to deepen, and only the closure of some banks and injection of new capital into others began the resolution. The Bank of Japan's monetary policy from the late 1980s onward, however, was increasingly out of step with US or other developed country norms. In particular, the Bank of Japan's limited response to deflation after being granted independence in 1998 stands out as a dangerous and unusual stance.