SO the Bank of Japan is lending to troubled Cosmo Credit Union to help tide it over the worst.
By the close of business yesterday, depositors had withdrawn 60 billion yen (about HK$4.8 billion) from Cosmo's 27 branches and automatic-teller machines, about 14 per cent of its total deposits as of June 30.
Cosmo's overdue lines came to about 184.2 billion yen, according one one estimate, while its total bad loans may top 370 billion yen.
The numbers keep going up, but the point at issue is that someone took his eye off the ball.
Cosmo's president has resigned and Cosmo chiefs were due to hold a press conference last night but what can they tell the press that the world does not already know? Cosmo has problems? The whole Japanese banking system seems to be on its knees.
Is the Japanese Government going to bail out the whole of the Japanese banking industry? Japanese banks are sitting on about 45 trillion yen in equity against bad loans that one economist at Deutsche Bank Capital Markets (Asia) reckons came to between 65 trillion and 70 trillion yen, or even as high as 100 trillion yen.
The reason the figures are so nightmarish is the bureaucracy looked the other way while Japanese banks threw money at borrowers.
