Investors are understandably scared of the sovereign debt crisis unfolding in Europe, but they are ignoring a more definite and significantly larger sovereign debt catastrophe that is about to hit the world's third-largest economy: Japan. The prelude to Japan's current crisis began in the early 1990s when its housing and stock market bubbles popped, leading to recession. Today, 20 years into endless stimuli, the Japanese economy is beset by the same rot it was then, except that its debt has tripled - the ratio of debt to gross domestic product (GDP) stands at almost 200 percent, double those of the United States and Germany, and second only to Zimbabwe.
(csmonitor.com)
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/Opinion/2010/0812/When-Japan-s-debt-bubble-bursts-watch-out