In the US, analysts like Stephen Smith and Barry Bosak cheerfully put their names to dismal forecasts of what is in store for national icon IBM Corp, and here in the UK, the faces and names of economic commentators such as Bill Martin, Michael Hughes, Tim Congdon, Gavin Davies are as familiar as those of leading politicians as they pop up on television spreading fiscal alarm and despondency, but they do things rather differently in Japan – according to Christopher Wood’s book The Bubble Economy, there when a group of Japanese pundits appeared on television putting forward the view that the stock market might be heading south, they insisted on having their faces fuzzed out like so many drug dealers or defecting spies – none of them wanted to bear the dishonour of being associated with a falling market.
