1.   Both were hit hard as loans extended during the bubble economy soured after the collapse of land and stock prices, analysts said.

2.   But other experts said the government was engaged in an increasingly desperate struggle to ease the consequences of a burst bubble economy.

3.   But the so-called bubble economy collapsed five years ago, puncturing those inflated prices, and many real estate loans went sour.

4.   But the Tokyo Forum is a very bad symbol of the excesses of the bubble economy.

5.   Instead, the real cause has been the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy and the rise of the yen against the dollar.

6.   It was a time of the bubble economy in Japan, for instance.

7.   It was bankers and investors in Moscow and the Thai capital, Bangkok, who speculated wildly on stocks and real estate and thus built up catastrophic bubble economies.

8.   Japanese securities firms have struggled ever since the bubble economy burst nearly a decade ago.

9.   Revenues were pouring into the government during the bubble economy, then when things turned bad, the deluge turned into a drought.

10.   Some say the U.S. government is simply nervous about its own bubble economy and is looking for a scapegoat to blame when stock prices inevitably collapse.