Word: japanned
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...seen this movie before, and it's not a happy one. Japan's financial sector imploded in the 1990s as bubbles in real estate and stock prices (sound familiar?) burst. Eventually, Japan's central bank drove interest rates to near zero to stimulate the economy. But it was, as the economists say, "pushing on a string." Banks were reluctant to lend because they needed to hoard capital to repair their balance sheets - just as they need to do now in the U.S. Economic growth slowed, and demand for the credit that was available diminished. The result was Japan's infamous...
...This gets us to the heart of the matter. When the wise men looked at their world in 1945, it was one of ruins. Germany and Japan had been destroyed. Britain was tired out; France shamed; Russia bled white. In China war would continue for another four years. Of the industrial democracies, only the U.S., Canada and Australia had been spared misery in their homeland. The U.S. economy accounted for nearly a half of total world output in 1945, a proportion that it has never approached since. Crucially, the U.S. defined what it was to be modern...
...from overseas, and features of American innovation that nobody else can match. But I spend about half my time outside the U.S., and I have to say that in many ways, like Bernard Kouchner, I think that the magic is gone. You want modern transportation systems? Try France or Japan. New airports? Half the cities of Asia. The old assumption that American culture would sweep the planet no longer holds good. In Africa and Asia, they don't cluster round TVs to watch baseball's World Series, but they do hang on every minute of every football game...
...certainly doesn’t qualify as an unusual night in the Kirkland House grille. But this particular game attracted some out-of-town spectators, turning the grille and the game into a petri dish of strange interactions. The visitors, who have come to Cambridge all the way from Japan, are not particularly interested in the ball game. Instead, they focus their attention on the student viewers. No, they are not psychologists studying sports fanatics. According to a network executive who wishes to remain anonymous, their intent is to capture exciting footage of intelligent student fans...
...electronics industry can go deep green. Companies like Dell - which sources one-fifth of its power from renewable resources and offsets the rest - will go green of their own accord, and customers may reward them for it. Other companies will need encouragement - like the system in place in Japan, where the ambitious levels of efficiency achieved by industry leaders are used to force the bottom of the table to catch up. For his part, Shapiro prefers "the carrot to the stick," pointing out that energy efficiency has been increasing, even without strong mandatory standards. But as our dependence on consumer...