Crunch time?

IT IS a truth universally acknowledged that Japan is in the grip of a credit crunch. Strapped for capital, Japan's beleaguered banks, almost everyone agrees, are loth to lend to any company with the slightest whiff of risk, which means mainly smallish domestically oriented ones. With exports slowing and domestic spending stagnant at best, this is the last thing that the economy needs. And this, say bureaucrats and politicians to anyone who cares to listen, is a very big reason why the government needs to inject lots of taxpayers' cash (up to ¥30 trillion, or nearly $250 billion) into bailing out, willy-nilly, the banking system. There is only one tiny catch: evidence of a credit crunch is notable mainly for its absence.