Word: yen
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...From the wooden boxes of the 1920s to the hulking contraptions of today, Japan's basic vending business has long been the same: someone had a yen (and some coins) and someone else had to drive around and restock those hungry machines with bottles, underwear or dried squid. Now, the paradigm-busting idea is that a growing number of vending machines are beginning to dispense digital data, altering the economics of a business once largely dependent upon a complex system of resale and deliveries. As vending machines lumber into the information age, future purchases will just as likely come...
...consumers buy the vast majority of Yamamoto, Miyake and Comme des GarCons merchandise, they are fascinated with what the Western world is wearing. The stock of international fashion conglomerates like LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton and the Gucci Group can rise or fall depending on the strength of the yen and the Japanese economy. With good reason: Japanese shoppers account for some 32% of Gucci and more than 45% of Louis Vuitton brand sales. Japanese consumers, says Gucci CEO Domenico De Sole, "like brands that are truly international...
...core of Japan's problems are its banks. Starting in 1998, when the banks were on the verge of collapse, the government authorized spending 70 trillion yen (nearly $600 billion) to shore them up. Trouble is, the government hasn't forced banks to reconcile bad debts, which now total at least $246 billion. Meanwhile, corporations are beginning to whack away at the cross-shareholdings, the financial bindings of the old business networks. These reforms are necessary. But they are also a big part of why the stock market is reeling, as corporations and banks alike sell off their investments. That...
...Japan is suddenly registering on Washington's radar screen again, it's because a Japan in free fall coupled with a U.S. slowdown could imperil the world's economy. A deflated yen, already at 20-month lows, could tilt the trade imbalance further in Japan's favor. And the noise of a bursting stock-market bubble heard across the U.S. last week sounded eerily similar to what Japan experienced a decade ago. "It wasn't a miracle for Japan in the 1980s," says Tadashi Nakamae, an economist who co-authored the alarmist tome Wake Up, Japan! "And it wasn...
While there are important differences in the two economies' slumps, the parallels are instructive. The strong-yen policy of the 1985 Plaza accord sucked money into the Japanese stock market, which soared 300% from 1985 to 1990. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin's strong-dollar stewardship did much the same for the U.S. stock market in the 1990s. The boom was characterized in Japan by inflated land prices, in the U.S. by the NASDAQ. Japan in its heyday, and the U.S. in its later boom, both experienced huge boosts in worker productivity, high growth and low inflation. Japan's manufacturing...