Japan recouped much of the public money it pumped into banks during the country's financial crisis last decade, when toxic loans totaled as much as ¥100 trillion, Financial Services Agency Commissioner Takafumi Sato said Wednesday.
The nation endured an economic and financial malaise in the 1990s known as the "lost decade" after the bursting of a real estate bubble that had been built on excessive lending. Insolvent lenders propped up by government bailouts became known as "zombie" banks and cast a long shadow over the world's second-largest economy.
The banking system of the 1990s was burdened with ¥90 trillion to ¥100 trillion in bad loans, Sato said at the Foreign Correspondents' Club in Tokyo.