Self-Development and Time-Management Skills. A Basic Need for Successful Living in the Twenty-first Century and the Globalized World economy

As Japan entered the twenty-first century, the hype about the Big Bang had died out, and it was consigned to dusty shelves as just another government report. It was business as usual in Tokyo. This brings us to a striking feature of Japan's post-Bubble trauma: paralysis. Instituting a real Big Bang is simply out of the question, for the whole edifice of Japanese finance might crumble if MOF allowed economic rationalism to infiltrate. It has been said that the Bubble losses were not as severe as they seem because they were merely «paper losses» – but for Japan, paper losses are a serious issue because the very genius of MOF's system was its ability to inflate assets on paper: Japan's rapid postwar development depended on it. So when troubles began to appear, MOF trod very gently, afraid to make any sudden moves. The concept of «latent profits» has come home to roost in the form of «latent losses.» Banks lent heavily to real-estate companies that own land now valued at a fifth or a tenth of the price they paid for it a decade or two ago ...»