scendancy to world leadership on the positive side of the ledger has been mirrored by America's fall into debt. A creditor nation since 1914, the United States became a net debtor for the first time in the 1980s. Its red ink ran quickly past Brazil, Mexico and Argentina all the way to the position of world's leading debtor. By the year 2000, Japanese net external assets may reach a positive one trillion dollars . The figure for the United States could be a negative one trillion dollars (Koretz 22). The United States has come to depend on Japanese investors to directly finance as much as 30 percent of the American government's annual budget deficit. Today, all ten of the world's largest banks (ranked by deposits) are Japanese. A quarter-million Americans already work for Japanese employers in the United States. Japanese banks control nearly 10 percent of U.S. retail banking assets--up from next to nothing a decade ago. In trend-setting California, five of the top ten banks are now Japanese. Some of the most hallowed names in investment ban
...