The Japanese bust (well, the bubble that lead to the bust) was itself partially engineered, as a clever bit of American protectionism. The Plaza Accord prompted the BoJ to cut interest rates, leading to a brief period of cheap and easy money that completely destroyed the remarkably solid and sustainable economy Japan had built post-war (sounds familiar?).
>with an entirely different view on antitrust (ambivalent to opposed)
Post-war, Japan (with the American occupation's "help") did what would be unthinkable to American businesses, taxing the personal wealth of company heads up to ~85% and purging them from their companies. This left much of Japan's industry essentially controlled by the government.
Sure, but the 'onus onus' per RW was geopolitical pressure from the power that defeated Japan in WW2. They were forced. What is remarkable about RW's analysis is the runaway success of the planned economy that catapulted post war Japan to a position of economic power before the changed were forced on Japan's policy makers.
> What is remarkable about RW's analysis is the runaway success of the planned economy that catapulted post war Japan to a position of economic power before the changed were forced on Japan's policy makers.
Not really.
There were similar works barely 20 years before Werner about the role MITI played in the Japanese miracle and how the US should emulate it (Chalmer Johnson's "MITI and the Japanese Miracle" played a significant role in seeding what became the CHIPS and IRA, as it was required reading in 80s and 90s era policy circles)
Werner's major contribution was his argument that the policies he ended up coining as QE could have resolved Japan's malaise in the 90s (and he absolutely was correct looking at Abe-era Japan's performance compared to before).
And Japan's planned economy is overstated, as Seong-ik Oh's
recently published "Overseas Energy Investment of Korea and Japan" investigates
I hope that exVC guy in your network is considering getting adopted (or playing matchmaker), my personal anecdata tells me they are open to adopting gai(koku)jin as heirs, it is not even just a movie trope these days, surprise!
I recommend reading the sources I listed in my initial comment (they are written by senior leadership and advisors at the BoJ from that era).
Furthermore, these are all texts that are expected reading in any upper level Asian Economics class.
> leading to a brief period of cheap and easy money that completely destroyed the remarkably solid and sustainable economy Japan had built post-war
The biggest cause was bad loan issues caused by lack of auditing and due dilligence. [0]
In that era, the BoJ would set a quota on loan origination (called a window guidance) that Japanese banks needed to meet (p.s. China used to do the same thing til 2015 which is a major reason for China's current real estate crisis)
The Plaza Accord would not have had as severe an impact if Japan's Window Guidance policy didn't incentivize business loans with minimal due diligence.
> Post-war ... purging them from their companies
And they completely reconstituted themselves in the 1950s by adopting the Keiretsu corporate structure where a single asset management firm controls all the broken off assets of the initial zaibatsu.
This is what Mitsui, Sumimito, Mitsubishi, Fuyo, etc did.
Take a look at NYT reporting about this from 1954 [1]
Japan also does not have a wealth tax.
> This left much of Japan's industry essentially controlled by the government
Japan always had a high amount of government intervention in it's economy.
MITI was the driver of Japanese industrial policy.
I recommend reading "MITI and the Japanese Miracle" (1982) by Chalmers Johnson to dig deeper into the history of interventionism in the Japanese model [2]
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While the Plaza Accord did have a significant impact on the Japanese economy, the recent politically driven "pop econ" Plaza Accord view needs to die [3]
Like anything else that's pop-anything, it's so broadstrokes that it's bordering on misinformation.
>with an entirely different view on antitrust (ambivalent to opposed)
Post-war, Japan (with the American occupation's "help") did what would be unthinkable to American businesses, taxing the personal wealth of company heads up to ~85% and purging them from their companies. This left much of Japan's industry essentially controlled by the government.