Saving The Sun

Description

For more than a decade, Japan's dismal economy - which has bounced from deflationary collapse to fitful recovery and back to collapse - has been the biggest obstacle to economic growth. Why has the world's second largest economy been unable to save itself? Why has a country, whose financial might in the 1980s was the most feared force on the globe, become the sick man of the world economy? Saving the Sun answers these questions and more in the riveting and remarkable story of Long Term Credit Bank, one of the world's most respected financial institutions, and its attempts to transform itself into a Western-style bank and reconcile the cultural gulf that still exists between Japan and the international banking community.

Gillian Tett was trained as a social anthropologist but became a journalist while doing fieldwork in Soviet Central Asia during the communist period in Russia. Since that time she has risen through the ranks of the Financial Times, holding positions on its economics desk before becoming the bureau chief in Japan. She now lives in London.

"'Smart and engaging...it's a riveting tale with important insights into Japan's culture and its sclerotic system.' Business Week; 'Saving the Sun is not simply about the fate of one Japanese bank. It is about the clash of two visions of finance...and how hard it is to reconcile them.' The Wall Street Journal Europe"