FT.com / Home UK / UK - Japan unlikely victim of global economic woe

FT.com / Home UK / UK - Japan unlikely victim of global economic woe: "By Michiyo Nakamoto and Chris Giles in London
Published: August 14 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 14 2008 03:00
Japan's economy had been seen as relatively immune to the ravages of the credit crisis hitting the US and Europe.
Its banks were much healthier than those on either side of the Atlantic; it was benefiting from an export boom to the rest of Asia; and its economy grew unexpectedly quickly in the first quarter of the year, recording an expansion of 0.8 per cent, four times the rate of anaemic US growth.
But although a bad quarter was expected - and there was an almost equally bad period exactly a year earlier - the contraction of Japan's gross domestic product by 0.6 per cent in the second quarter has jolted everyone out of any complacency that the world's second largest economy could continue to operate untouched by events elsewhere."