Adecade ago, Tadashi Nakamae, a prominent Japanese economist, was fretting about a credit crunch: a property bubble had burst in Japan, leaving local banks engulfed in bad loans and prompting a financial crisis.

Ten years later, Mr Nakamae feels an unexpected sense of déjà vu. For as 2008 gets under way, bad loans are yet again undermining major banks, partly due to falling property prices. But this time, the epicentre of the shock is on the other side of the Pacific, in America. "Japan's banking crisis in the 1990s might prove an important lesson for America's subprime woes," Mr Nakamae concludes.