Yen!: Japan's New Financial Empire and Its Threat to America

The Japanese are coming! The Japanese are coming! Journalist Burstein apparently sees himself as a latter-day Paul Revere warning a hapless American public against the imminent invasion by Japanese bankers and financiers. He recounts the familiar facts of Japan's economic miracle, then expresses his grave concerns about Japanese purchases of U.S. government bonds, real estate in Manhattan and Hawaii and investments in factories on U.S. soil. He argues that Japan as the world's major creditor nation is gaining power over the U.S., now the world's largest debtor nation. He even conjures up a vision of an aggressive, remilitarized Japan shaping the world in its own image. To overcome the Japanese ``threat,'' Burstein recommends the standard litany of interventionist nostrums including the adoption of a Federal industrial policy, a separate gasoline tax to reduce the budget deficit, and trade and market reciprocity arrangements with the Japanese. The author's few good ideas on increasing American competitiveness, such as changing the tax code to encourage savings, are lost in his alarmist and overwrought analysis of the U.S.-Japan trade relationship. (Oct.)