Japain No Gain?

Japan is on the cover of the Economist again: "Leaderless Japan". Every time the British weekly newspaper (or any other foreign media) covers Japan, its reports, esp. about lack of political leadership, are daunting and hopeless. Someone even argued that Japan is lucky to have such a flexible political system to change its premier while America is not. The point was, nobody couldn't stop George Bush, and he was the President of the U.S. for 2 consecutive terms. That's totally nonsense. America does have an impeachment process, and the Congress could take such an initiative if they really wanted to do so. And they didn't.

How about business (specifically banking sector)? Last month the Economist's special reports covered banks in emerging markets. The report discussed two kinds of successful foreign banks in the markets. The first are global network banks: Citigroup, HSBC and Standard Chartered. The other are "gone native" banks such as Santander, BBVA and UniCredit. Not surprisingly the countries of foreign banks and of emerging markets had a deep-rooted relationship of colonial rule and immigration, and use the same languages. Japan had been a colonialist country but failed to make a good relationship with the Asian nations it governed. Japanese is also a language used only by 125 million people living the islands.

So, a question is whether Japanese banks can survive in the global market, esp. by entering into and expanding its business in the emerging markets? Last week an investment banker said Japan's strengths is technology backed by Research & Development while its weakness is commercializing. I couldn't agree with him more. Still, such an argument seems to apply only to manufacturers not financial sector. Then, what's the expertise of Japanese banks? The only answer I could find is a bit old joke. But, it's brilliant one.

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Sorry. Only Japanese is available... To make a long story short, Japanese bankers can contribute by counting votes in Miami of the U.S. presidential election in 2000.