ABSTRACT

The cold war between the USA and the Soviet Union finally appears to be over but Japan seems to have emerged as the victorious party. While the now exhausted protagonists invested a large proportion of their savings and other resources on maintaining a high level of military preparedness, the Japanese continued to save at phenomenally high rates and invest in new machines, education and commercial research. Consequently, Japanese commerce and finance are now healthy, strong and positioned for further growth while the Soviet economy faces major problems and the future prosperity of the US economy is threatened by the large amounts of foreign and domestic debt capital that have been used to maintain its recent prosperity.