Customer Reviews

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

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I am a Chinese and until recently did I finish this book written 13 years ago,now in retrospect some point of this book is not seeing through enough,Daniel overestimated Japan's awesome financial power in surface,while neglected its hidden bubble economy,much of Japanese asset was built on that overexpanding bubble economy,esp. sky-rocketing high real estate price in Tokyo and other major Japanese cities. When bubble broke,Japanese myth broke in one night,its asset shrank dramatically,but anyway it's an alarming good book,helps remind us to keep vigilent at any time.

It would be impossible to write another book that, trying to peer into the future, proves more utterly, completely, diametrically wrong with the passage of time. Sure it's great fun to read such a book with the benefit of a decade of hindsight, but perhaps one can learn some lessons from the mistakes of the author.

Taking things at face value. Many of his conclusions are supported by quotes from or references to people who have some bias or aganda. Burstein never questions their beliefs -- unless they are on the wrong side of his analysis.

Tulipmania. One thing clear from Burstein's book is that a lot of Westerners at the time realized very clearly that Japan's stock and real estate markets were absurdly over-valued bubbles. They were utterly correct. Burstein writes of them mainly to illustrate their supposed parochial failure to appreciate the truth of Japanese excellence and economic might.

Extrapolating unsustainable & temporary trends. A lot of his expectations for Japan are based on then-recent (1988) trends arising from the speculative mania in the Japanese financial markets. When the bubble collapsed, those trends collapsed. Burstein discusses the belief among some that the markets would fail; but not believing them, he never bothers to contemplate what would follow if such a market collpase really did happen (which it did).

No appreciation of free trade. Though Burstein seems concerned about the potential political unrest in the US that could result from protectionist fears, he doesn't understand the value of free trade. Therefore he ignores the benefits awaiting the US in terms of growth and productivity that result from ever-freer trade (and the harm Japan would suffer due to its closed markets).

Curious Specifics:
In discussing the Semiconductor industry, Burstein utterly misses the distinction of the US mastering the intellectual value-added side of the semiconductor business (eg, Intel and microprocessors); therefore he leaves no room in his analaysis for the success of, say, Intel, Motorola, Qualcomm, or for the rise of a new markets (eg, DSPs) that would be completely dominated by US firms (like Texas instruments). He scornfully dismisses US fabless firms vs. Japan' mastery of cheap, commodity chipmaking.

In the Computer Industry, Burstein ignores utterly & completely the US dominance in software. Also, he accepts that Japan is sure to dominate computer hardware (based on fuzzy refereneces to their success in electronics) without presenting any evidence, and without discussing the role of American companies (who remained much more dominant then Japanese firms,right up til Dell took charge.)

In Telecom, he praises Japan's ISDN initiative, accepting without analysis that all important advances in telecom hardware would come from Japan in the 1990s. Completely ignored that actual free markets had little interest in ISDN. Completely ignores data networking and innovations driven by Silicon Valley. Clearly he never bothered to ask anyone if anything was brewing in the US that would be important (surely people at the time knew of Arpanet, Cisco, 3Com, etc, even if they could not have predicted the Internet explosion)

In sum, sure hindsight is 20/20, but this guy didn't get the job done back when he wrote this.