One of the fascinating aspects of viewing the credit crunch that is going on around the world is trying to figure out if any parallels can be drawn between the different countries. While the credit crunch has most severely affected the United States and United Kingdom, at the same time many of the developed nations of the world (Western Europe, South Africa and Japan) have had their share of troubles as well. And because different analysts will hold different factors important in their analysis, anything that changes in another country might be construed as something that could change here.

Well, as far as Japan goes, things appear to be improving in the general economy. Loans are up, real estate is starting to look a lot more promising than it did a few months ago and even the unemployment rate is starting to come down. It was 4% in February, 3.9% in March and as April comes to a close it has been clocked in at 3.8%, showing a very distinct downward trend. How low it will go is anybody’s guess, but at the same time there are many people jumping on the bandwagon and stating that conditions in Japan improving might be a sign that things are going to improve in other places within the developed world as well.

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