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John Ganz

lines on the record: 49
first: 2025-10-10
most recent: 2025-10-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, and I think that there's that sense that some things, some ways of doing things, some processes, some technologies are good and there's not any real reason to replace them. And obviously like when productivity is your number one goal, that's not necessarily, again, it may make in some way, I find it very charming and I find it also one theory I've read is that the reason why unemployment is very low is because somebody has to be there to get those faxes and they're not that Japanese companies are not that keen to adopt software that might replace a worker. So there's a certain kind of pro-social attitude and not doing these upgrades. But yeah, the transition to the software age was one of those places where Japan is thought to have made a wrong term.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Japanese government just had to kind of wage an internal jihad to get people to get its own bureaucracy to stop using floppy disks. Japanese companies still often use fax machines.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think that that is a question I don't exactly know the answer for, but that's often given as the big mistake that they made, right? So Japanese companies made an investment decision at just the wrong time that hardware, and I think it was partially because they were always just really good at developing hardware and they had developed a lot of institutional knowledge about making devices and improving devices, improving hardware. And they were like, look, this is what we're good at. I also think that there is a certain not to get into too many cultural explanations, but there is a certain conservatism in Japan about tools, about devices and things that are seen to work aren't quickly gotten rid of.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not a terrible place to live. No. Yeah. It's not like it went back to the Stone Age. So I think that that's also just a very growth mindset, but it's still, I think, has an extremely low rate of unemployment, healthy, relatively healthy population, good education, not a terrible place to live.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard to know in real time. Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. I don't think we should be complacent or, but I think it's an interesting lesson of the history here. It's just things can go from being commonsensical, the biggest threat. Everybody knows that they're going to win. Everybody knows that they have a better system. And then a few years later, everyone is like, what were we thinking? Why did we think that? And we could, they had so many internal problems that were just out of this. And that's kind of the same way with financial bubbles bursting. I guess you could talk about these as also as like political bubbles is that everyone's like, oh, wow, look at this big combine, this big system that's kind of humming along. And then things are going on behind the scenes that are like, oh, there's an intrinsic flaw that's making its way to the surface. And then it kind of manifests itself.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, exports were a big part of the growth of both. There's obviously a strong state in both. In one case, it's more this vaunted Japanese bureaucracy, which then turned out not to be so great. In the other side, it's the Communist Party and state banks, big trade surpluses, a big part of it. But there are a big difference. I mean, China's a lot bigger, has a way bigger population. I think its political system, as you were saying, it can kind of make things happen and prevent things from happening, make really radical intrusions in the financial system. It doesn't have infinite power in that regard. I think I've heard you guys discuss that, but I think they have definitely a little more political economic firepower than Japan has. And I think part of that is, you know, the strength of the Communist Party as an institution and the size of the population.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They often switch names, I think, when they came to the United States. They would have consultants tell them that branding would be?”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, Apple is so dominant in consumer electronics and you don't need that many devices anymore. So, the fact is, we don't need CD players, we don't need Walkman, we don't need mini discs, we don't need all these different things. So there was this kind of wonderful market that had all these different interesting gadgets in it. And I think that that fascinated people. And your phone or your computer does all of that now. I find that to be, I mean, this is just a factor totally of aging and nostalgia. But as we were just saying, I find that to be a little sad. And I thought those devices were actually better in certain ways.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To own a Japanese car. Japanese electronics, I think, were always like, this is really neat. I think it was not necessarily maybe Lexus was the exception, right? But Toyota Honda, I think these were very practical choice. I think there's a little bit of Chinese car culture starting that's like, oh, yeah, they're really making some cool looking stuff over there now. And also there is a beginning, you know, you see lots of TikToks and reels and so on and so forth of Japanese, I'm sorry, Chinese city. So, I think there's a beginning of, I don't know what to call it, China chic, but definitely like, wow, amazing things are happening in China. So I think there's a little bit of that. I am not a young person anymore. And I think there's also just like.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Detail oriented engineering, a lot of paid attention to design and aesthetics. So that, I think, was a big reason why a lot of those products were really nicely designed. I think it's a sad thing in a way. I think there's a little bit of China of people starting to think Chinese cars are cool. Japanese cars were always like, that's reliable and well built, but they weren't like, they were kind of like, it's a little boring.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nintendo, Sega, the design was terrific. I think one thing that Japan, and this was also American businesses were really curious about how Japan did this. They said, oh, they have all these wonderful craft traditions. And all these wonderful craft traditions are not left behind. They're incorporated into industrial production.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So perhaps some of the cultural memory of that or the familiarity we have with other cultures from Japan, I don't think we Americans are so used to, are more cosmopolitan than I would say than we are at the beginning of the 80s.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that that is because of the United States' history with Japan and the war, which had in our imagination, I think also Japan at that time was a kind of cultural hegemon in East Asia in the way that maybe South Korea is now in terms of their exports of pop culture and video games and art and music and so on and so forth. I think that's a big part of it. I think also there's a great book by an author, Drew McKivitt called Consuming Japan. I think Japan, in a way, was a lot of Americans, and he argues that Japan in a way was a lot of Americans' first contact with globalization. And it was both very interesting, but also a little scary and alien. And I think perhaps China, the rise of China, the rise of South Korea, it doesn't look so weird anymore because we went through the experience of Japan and also because of the experience of Japan kind of turned into enough.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We may be living in a very different world if the bible doesn't pop in Japan and those policies start to make more sense. So the side of the Clinton administration, I mean, that is both interested and wants to take a tougher line in Japan. It kind of becomes a moot point as Japanese economy kind of collapses and fades away. So it was a really pivotal moment. And yeah, I think that it's such a strange thing that it was everybody was fixated on it with such common sense. Politicians ran on it, arguably demagogued on it. And then it's kind of a historical curiosity.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Policy. There was discussion of industrial policy back then. There was a side of the Clinton administration that looked at Japanese industrial policy and protectionism and said this looks very interesting.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would say that he had the most successful third-party candidate. Yeah, okay, that is true. About 20% of the vote, which is significant, I think about two-thirds of Americans by 1989 believed, I mean, there's reason for this because the Soviet didn't look like it was on its last legs, but believed that Japan was a bigger threat than the Soviet Union. And a lot of politicians went on the stump. Songus tried to Japan bash, as they called it, Pat Buchanan went Japan bashing. Clinton less so. But I would say there was a side of Clinton's campaign and the side of his eventual staffing of his administration that was definitely a lot closer in thinking to the people who are worried, both worried about and admiring of Japan. They went in with the intention of being really hard-nosed about certain trade negotiations. And they also, and this is not, we talk a lot about industrial policy.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pat Buchanan had an essay and a book about trade policy where he talked about they've decided after losing World War II they're going to take the economic road to build their empire so it was more like using war as a metaphor but there was I think fewer worries about the actual military might which makes sense”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were some very small shades of it. The more hysterical books imagined a shooting war between the United States and Japan, a Japanese total reindustrialization that included remilitarization. This doesn't make a lot of sense because Japan is very insistent on his pacifism. I mean, that might be changing now, but that fear was really not one of the more realistic ones projections. So there was a little bit of worry about that. I think people were fantasizing and imagining Japan as a rival to the United States that would eventually be a military rival or could be a military rival. But no, so far as I know, there was one book, The Coming War with Japan. Most of the others viewed it as a economic war and a cultural war, but the fantasy of like they were going to do.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They were in the same kind of block in the Cold War. They were arguably part of our empire, kind of under our protection. The discourse was that Japan was sneakily kind of getting out from under American hegemony to set up their own. And that doesn't make a whole lot of sense in historical retrospect or even was a possibility. No. China was obviously never had that kind of relationship with the United States. They were always, I mean, they were, we organized a reproachment with them, but they were never an ally or even, one might say, I think vassal state is putting it far too strongly, but a part of the Western bloc.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Soviet Union is no longer the primary opponent or rivalry United States. So the collectivism of Japan becomes the thing that's set against American free enterprise and rugged individualism. Some people view that it's an interesting mix of admiration and envy and also kind of fear and saying, oh, we're not like that as Americans. So it's a little bit different. I mean, it's also different because the United States and Japan were ostensibly military allies. Yeah.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that is interesting. There wasn't the sense that there was direction or command and there was like a really strong political system behind all this. It was a series of on the smarter end really good institutions and great education on the more pulpy poppy end of cultural essential features that made them extremely good at this. The way that they presented Japan was like there's no center of power. This is an interlocking borg-like corporations and businesses are all cooperating in different ways. It wasn't like, oh, there's an authoritarian state with a leader. This leaderless authoritarianism. And there was some kind of fears that were reminiscent maybe. You got to also remember that the Cold War is winding up”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe probably, but he was extremely powerful. He said, every worker is a brother. That's the way Japanese companies run, and that's the way I run. So he thought we needed to adopt policies more like Japan between cooperation of business and government.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A delegation of Japanese businessmen, I think from Toyota, came to visit electronic data systems, his firm, and they praised him and they said, of all the companies in the United States, you're the most Japanese.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was no one in politics at that time who was worried about the future of American economy, industry. Even our political supremacy in the world that was not fixated or focused or had a comment to say about Japan and Ross Perot was not an exception. He was both a protectionist, so he thought that the United States' trade policies were leaving us in a bad place with regards to not only Japan, but also at that time West Germany, German unification had just happened and South Korea. But he also was very curious about the way he believed he wasn't really much, he was a big capitalist, not much of a free trader. So he was really attracted to the close relationship between business and government in Japan. And he also was very proud of the close knit nature of his company.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that book is one of the more serious books. I mean, you know, he's a real scholar and it was more a real analysis of institutions. It doesn't get into the kind of, there may be a little armchair sociology in there about Japanese cultural mores, but there's definitely much more hard analysis of the relationship between government and business in Japan.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Atari Democrats are a little different. They wanted, they were among the people who were really curious about, I think, state industrial policy in Japan.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Early 9090s, the tide was kind of going out, but the upset wasn't. And part of why this happened was the United States still had a close economic relationship, but there was an election going on and a Japanese election in the United States, and a Japanese politician made a very intemperate remark about the appearance and abilities of American workers. He said that they were not able to read in many cases, that they were overweight. And this caused a massive rage in the United States, and a lot of politicians going into the election year. Obviously, gin this up.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But this didn't set in in the United States. Japan was, there was an outflow. There was a sudden huge outflow of Japanese funds. They had invested. Yeah, I mean, between 1988 to the end of 1990, Japanese investors invested about $52 billion in the United States from, you know, that includes everything from buying companies to real estate to new factories. And then in the first few months of 1992, that figure had dropped to 2.3 billion and they made a net investment of 30, almost 31 billion dollars in securities. And by 1992, they were net sellers of government securities. They took some real baths, like this financier Minuro Isutani. And this was one of these things that upset Americans. He bought Pebble Beach. He sold it for a loss of about $350 million. Yeah, so by the...”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They say, oh, this was a horrible system of crony capitalism where the government was protecting people and there were bad loans on the books and if there had been functioning markets and a lot of these things wouldn't happen. So suddenly all of the things that appeared, most of the things, not all of them, but many of the things that appeared really impressive about Japanese capitalism all of a sudden people discovered what the downsides were.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Private capitalism. That was one theory. That was a little different from the theories that said, oh, the Japanese have some special cultural Confucianism or whatever, Shinto Buddhism that was making them do this. And everyone said, oh, well, Japanese firms are insulated from financial markets, right? Because they have this close relationship with banks. They don't have to raise funds on capital markets. They have these long-standing relationships so they can do these great long-term development projects, research and development projects. They're not exposed to the quarterly pressures of American companies, so on and so forth. Then after the bubble crashes, everyone looks at all this stuff.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything that everyone believed was so wonderful about Japanese capitalism. So in 1982, Charles Johnson wrote a book called MIDI in the Japanese Miracle. And this said, okay, well, the reason why they did it is because they had this wonderful industrial policy, which coordinate investment, protected industries, guided firms. And it was kind of a mixture of state intervention.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He included a bibliography of books he had written about Japan that detailed the threat. The book is not subtle. A group of Japanese businessmen are involved in the murder of a very beautiful blonde woman. And the detective is tacifying this out, and he has a meeting with the senator, and the senator, they talk about maybe the possibility of dropping another bomb on Japan. That's another thing to remember, is that United States and Japan, in living memory, had fought a war and there was Pearl Harbor, which Americans felt very sensitive about. What happened was there was a credit-fueled bubble in Japan and it burst. And it was followed by a banking crisis, deflation. And then all of a sudden,”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have seen the movie. I have read the book partially when I was doing research for the book, for my book, and at the end of the book, he, in case no one got the very subtle message in the book.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know what's really interesting is that the panic coincided not with the peak of Japanese power, but with about the asset bubble bursting. So, you see in 1992 rising sun in the Michael Crichton book come out. And then that also turns into Yeah, and”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And if you look at the image of dystopia in the 80s, like in cyberpunk literature or in Blade Runner, it's a lot of Japanese company signage in a city of mixed ethnic makeup that looks very chaotic. It looks a lot like cities in Japan. So yeah, I think people were really thought, and I think it was just kind of common sense. If you got into a, if you took an airplane ride and you got into a conversation with businessman next to you, guy who owned a small business, he had read in magazines, newspapers, books. Everyone kind of like the, I'm sorry to use this meme, the midwinter take at the time was sort of like Japan is going to take over the United States. Yeah.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, absolutely. So I think that weirdly those unconscious impressions or institutional knowledge or just hang ups that stick with individuals. Definitely. And, you know, he may just still be thinking of Japan, Japan, and Japan.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's been extremely consistent. He published ads in the newspaper. He went on TV and complained about it. He said Japan was ripping us off and Japan was buying all these wonderful American things that should belong to us. So that economic nationalism goes way back when. And there might be an argument that his protectious instincts were really shaped by that encounter with Japan as a potential rival. So, I think that, you know, the Japan panic and Trump kind of being of another age in a certain way, although, again, some of these things apply well to left its finger.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Paul Songus, who was, I don't know how many of your listeners are going to remember him. I do. Okay, so he was kind of. I don't. Centrist, business friendly, democratic politician who was a candidate for president, not someone you would expect to kind of like demagogue on populist terms, but he said in a speech the UAW the Cold War is over and Japan won. This is obviously a huge exaggeration, but it was more like the Cold War ended in Japan kind of paid for it. So I could understand from the perspective of Japan, when they're seeing these things bumble up and anger bubble up in America, they're like, we thought we were competitors a little bit, but.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Investing in American real estate and buying quintessentially American properties. And this was kind of upsetting to people. So the trade deficit was obviously upsetting people who actually had a skin in the game of the industries, workers, the businesses, Leia Cocoa was not very happy about it. wrote about it and complained about it on TV. But the actual purchasing of American, like these kind of symbols of Americana made people kind of get more tense about this nationalistic fervor. So yeah, the money was just flowing in. And at that time with the United States had a lot of deficit spending and we were pumping out ships and military equipment and the interest in Japanese savers and American treasuries just came along at the right time.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They bought the Rockefeller Center. There was talk of Nintendo buying the Seattle Mariners. There was a lot of purchasing, a lot of downtown LA. You mentioned the Nakatomi Tower, like there was this idea of Japan.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Japanese investors also started to look at real assets. Like they started to look at real estate and the returns on those things were so fantastic compared to the way things were born in Japan. Oh, yeah.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What actually happened is Japan is the country with excess savings. So Japanese investments began to flow into the United States. Caterpillar suddenly finds Komatsu with a plant next door to it. So this little scheme to undermine its competitors through currency wizardry didn't work. The Reagan administration was open to it because they were into free trade stuff. So it didn't really break with their ideology, but it was a strange move that backfired. And then also Japanese investors were used to very meager returns. And the United States had very attractive investments going on at that time, like treasuries because of the Volcker policies had very high returns. So Japanese savers were very interested in them.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think that there's obviously the actual economic facts and the relationship the United States with Japan. And then there is the discourse about it. I think what happened is you had a situation where you had the beginnings of deindustrialization in the United States. You had a very strong dollar. You had a lot of products that were coming in that were extremely high quality and attractive to American consumers. You also had some policies that are very strange, Caterpillar was a big competitor with Komatsu. They went to the Reagan administration. They brought this economic study to the Reagan administration and they said, well, we want to open up Japan's financial markets because the difference in our currencies is causing this problem. Now, this doesn't even make sense in economic theory.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that he observed correctly that Japan had made a miraculous comeback after the war. They had transformed themselves from being totally destroyed in the world from being kind of a producer of goods that were considered kind of cheap just in the way we used to think made in China or made in Taiwan weren't necessarily signs of quality. And then Japan becomes a place where it Manufacturers items that are still not terribly expensive but are known for engineering feats and are quite good. And he also gets into some things we might today call Orientalist or centralizing, but he had these what he thought were sociological insights about the solidity of Japanese society, of their education system, of their relationships between the state and businesses and other writers kind of develop these themes in different directions.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think he was worried about Japan, and he was a little ahead of the curve, actually, because he wrote his book in the, I think it was in the late 1960s, and it came out in early 1970s. And he was describing Japan and its institutions and predicted that by the year 2000, that Japan would be the First economy in the world and overtake the United States. This was a little bit before. Now the later books make a little more sense. This is really before you start to see the economic problems in the United States that would make this kind of interest. And also before the trade deficit with the United States had really exploded. So he was a kind of”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll have a few megadeaths, but I don't think, and he thought that the United States shouldn't be so fearful about it. But there's another weird interpretation of the book that this was kind of like some signaling strategy that the United States, because in the book he said, you can't show that you're afraid to actually pull the trigger because then the other side will push you around. So in a way, the book was some kind of signaling strategy and his game theory mind to be like, hey man, we're not worried. We're writing books that say thermonuclear war is not that big of a deal. Very, very bizarre figure. And I think some people consider him very sinister, obviously, but a real eccentric.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, that's true. Yeah, it's a really strange and interesting character. He is one of the models for Dr. Strange Love. He wrote a book called Onthermonuclear War, which is probably one of the strangest books you'll ever read. And it's extremely cheerful about thermonuclear war. Basically, kind of saying it wouldn't be that bad and saying that, you know, yeah, and I think this is where the term, he may have originated the term megadhs and saying, you know, yeah, we'll get a little messed up, but actually there's so many people in this country we're so productive. How bad would it really be?”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exposure, the box office exposure, but I think in the 80s and 90s there was definitely more cultural product, which I'm sure we'll discuss more cultural products that brought this kind of fear, curiosity, interest, paranoia to the surface.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's true. It does feel sort of an elite project. There's a lot of interest, curiosity about what's going on in China and what they do well, both in DC among policymakers. And I think also obviously in Silicon Valley. Yeah. A lot of think tanks are studying China thinking about China. A lot of business people are very interested in China. Yeah, I don't know. It's strange because you would think in an age that, you know, has a lot of. One might argue paranoid thinking going on, it doesn't factor that much into a lot of pop culture. I think the movies thing might be a part of that. That wasn't the case. Just the sure.”
2025-10-10 · Odd Lots · John Ganz on the Era When America Was Consumed by Panic With Corporate Japan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source