very rich. But if you look at the way people live, they don't look very rich. People are crammed into tiny apartments. They live a highly coerced and submissive existence. If you develop any reasonable quality of life standards, Japan would not rank very high by many measures, although it ranks quite high in others, like health, for example. So it's a mixed story. It think there are serious weaknesses in that economy. I'm not all that surprised by the current recession and financial crisis in Japan. They have such resources and capital. They'll doubtless pull out of this one. DB: Along with the Arab oil producing states and some portions of Europe, Japan seems to be the only other area where there is excess capital formation for investment. There is a lot of excess capital, but it's not clear what it's going to look like after this crisis has passed. A lot of it was based on very chancy investments and a huge bubble in real estate which was highly inflated. But it's still true. They have plenty of excess capital. In my opinion, German-based Europe is a more likely prospect for a world economic leader in the long term. DB: You just said "crisis," which reminds me of something I've been hearing as long as I can remember, and I am certain you have as well, the "current crisis in capitalism." It seems to be an ongoing story. Is this particular crisis any different? There has been a global stagnation for about twenty years now. The growth rates and the rise in productivity of the 1950s and 1960s are things of the past. It leveled off around the early 1970s. Things like the breakdown of the Bretton Woods system were symptomatic. Since then there has been a kind of stagnation. It's not level across the globe. For example, for Africa it's been a catastrophe. For Latin America it's been a catastrophe. In fact, for most of the domains of the capitalist world it has been absolutely catastrophic, including internally. Large parts of American and Br...
