【英文】野村报告：从20世纪90年代日本看中国的资产负债表衰退和结构性问题（19页）

The bubble had two main causes. One was a sense of overconfidence born of excessive  praise from the US and Europe and memorialized in the phrase “Japan as number one.”  The other was the Bank of Japan’s aggressive monetary accommodation, carried out as  the appreciation of the yen under the September 1985 Plaza Accord—an agreement  designed to rectify excessive strength in the US dollar—left local companies increasingly  reluctant to invest in Japan. But with businesses reluctant to borrow for capex  investments, surplus funds had nowhere to go but existing assets.  Banks became extremely willing to lend during the bubble. At one point it was said that it  was quicker to call up a bank and get a loan approved than it was to have soba delivered  from the neighborhood noodle shop.  

Surplus of funds led Japanese companies to get involved in “financial  engineering”  There was an explosive increase in so-called “zai-tech” or “financial engineering,”  another name for borrowing these funds and investing them in stocks or real estate.  Japanese companies thus increased both their financial assets and their financial  liabilities during the bubble (Figure 2).  In Figure 2, white bars stretching above the horizontal zero line signify an increase in the  financial assets of the nonfinancial corporate sector, while shaded bars below the zero  line imply an increase in its financial liabilities.  The dotted line indicates financial assets less financial liabilities—i.e., the financial  surplus or deficit. When this is above the center line, the nonfinancial corporate sector is  running a financial surplus and is therefore a net saver. When it is below the center line,  the sector is running a financial deficit and is a net borrower.