Japan may have a first-rate economy. But it has also a second-rate financial system - and that weakness could prove disastrous. Leading Japanese financial institutions border on the primitive compared with their Western counterparts - and this matters because in the late 1980s Japan experienced the biggest financial mania seen this century, the effects of which were felt worldwide. Like all speculative booms, it has since gone spectacularly bust - prolonging the West's deflationary recession, and having a depressing effect on economic growth everywhere. The Japanese refer to this as the Bubble Economy. This book tells the story of the Bubble Economy, of the scandals it has inevitably spawned in both the banking and securities business, and of its effects on the world's economy.