All kinds of "self-confident" experts make predictions in the mass media about the economy and politics. In Japan, such experts are rarely held accountable if they err in their predictions. In the late 1980s, when the bubble economy peaked, Japanese experts expressed the following opinions that later turned out to be completely mistaken:
* U.S. manufacturing industry was declining because of misguided management techniques. The industry could revive itself only by learning Japanese management strategies. There was no way for the United States to eliminate its huge budget and trade deficits, which caused the value of the U.S. dollar to keep falling.
* The intelligence level of Americans was much lower than that of Japanese because of poor U.S. elementary and middle-school education. The U.S. should promote educational reform for its economic revival, using Japanese education as a model. (In 1987, then Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone caused an uproar when he said the intelligence level of Americans was not high because "they include many Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and blacks." He suggested that Japan did not have such a problem because it was "racially homogenous." )