Lots and lots of zeroes
The national debt of Japan has just hit one quadrillion yen. That's a thousand trillion, or a million billion. As far as I know, this is the highest national debt figure in its own currency ever posted by a country not experiencing hyper-inflation. (Italy's debt would be even greater, but they stopped using the Lira and converted to Euros.)
The late great Michael Crichton came up with some amazing book concepts, such as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. But he fell on his face with Rising Sun (1992), which pretty much said that Japan was eventually going to economically dominate the United States. Nearly two "lost decades" later, it is clearly not going to happen.
But it might be well to keep in that back of our minds that the U. S. national debt is even larger in absolute terms than that of Japan. (Though not in percentage terms.) Are we entitled to any of the debt forgiveness that the third world nations keep talking about?
The late great Michael Crichton came up with some amazing book concepts, such as The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park. But he fell on his face with Rising Sun (1992), which pretty much said that Japan was eventually going to economically dominate the United States. Nearly two "lost decades" later, it is clearly not going to happen.
But it might be well to keep in that back of our minds that the U. S. national debt is even larger in absolute terms than that of Japan. (Though not in percentage terms.) Are we entitled to any of the debt forgiveness that the third world nations keep talking about?