1.   An interest rate increase would cut into those profits, money that could be used to write off trillions of yen in bad loans from the bubble era.

2.   Banks need the maximum spread to help write off trillions of yen in bad loans still on their books from the speculative bubble era.

3.   By contrast, Japanese financial issues are facing the repercussions of overexuberant lending in the bubble era.

4.   By contrast, Japanese financial issues are facing the repercussions of over-exuberant lending in the bubble era.

5.   Construction and real estate companies -- heavily saddled with debt from the end of the speculative bubble era -- were also sold off.

6.   Instead, it reflects the valuation excesses of the bubble era, which have been reduced but not eliminated.

7.   Most of the big winners of the bubble era probably believed they were genuinely building a new economy.

8.   In the past decade of the bubble era, we see a new group of business people who made their fortunes from toying with imaginary numbers.

9.   The bubble era led to over-investment not just in condominiums and offices in Bangkok, but to some types of houses as well.

10.   This frugality reflects the state of the economy in general and exemplifies their unpretentious, down-to-earth determination to clean up the remnants of the economic bubble era.