James Baker lied to Mikhail Gorbachev about NATO expansion. The Russians have not trusted the Americans since. China, a humble, precocious, neophyte on the world stage noticed. Sino-American closeness that began under Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon and accelerated under Deng Xiaoping has been replaced by Chinese wariness of America and renewed closeness with Russia in geopolitics and in economics.
Japan was the miracle economy of post-World War II. In 1985 James Baker and the finance ministers of France, Britain, West Germany, and Japan signed the "Plaza Accord" which:
1. Devalued the dollar against the yen.
2. Liberalized Japanese interest rates.
3. Internationalized the yen.
In all three Japan was made to not act in Japan's economic interests but rather in the interests of the world, read: US, economy. Japanese auto exports slumped; Japan tried to counter by liberalizing interest rates; Japanese investors took the easy money and invested it in stocks rather than manufacturing which would have been futile given the strenghthening of the yen, which led to a Japanese "asset bubble" which could have been pricked by raising domestic interest rates but which the Plaza Accord and Japan's mentor and protector the US...discouraged, which did discourage Japan from taking the prescribed monetary measures, all of which produced in the Japanese economy an epoch so important that it has been given its own name The Lost 10 Years, name changed to The Lost 20 Years, epochs and names that the Chinese, humble, precocious students that they are, believe the Japanese would have avoided if they had not been such close friends with the US; epochs, names and close friends of the US the Chinese wish not to: experience, have, be.
Japan was the miracle economy of post-World War II. In 1985 James Baker and the finance ministers of France, Britain, West Germany, and Japan signed the "Plaza Accord" which:
1. Devalued the dollar against the yen.
2. Liberalized Japanese interest rates.
3. Internationalized the yen.
In all three Japan was made to not act in Japan's economic interests but rather in the interests of the world, read: US, economy. Japanese auto exports slumped; Japan tried to counter by liberalizing interest rates; Japanese investors took the easy money and invested it in stocks rather than manufacturing which would have been futile given the strenghthening of the yen, which led to a Japanese "asset bubble" which could have been pricked by raising domestic interest rates but which the Plaza Accord and Japan's mentor and protector the US...discouraged, which did discourage Japan from taking the prescribed monetary measures, all of which produced in the Japanese economy an epoch so important that it has been given its own name The Lost 10 Years, name changed to The Lost 20 Years, epochs and names that the Chinese, humble, precocious students that they are, believe the Japanese would have avoided if they had not been such close friends with the US; epochs, names and close friends of the US the Chinese wish not to: experience, have, be.
