onspiracy with him to keep the catastrophe hidden from the U.S. Federal Reserve Board. Toshihide Iguchi's implications and testimony described how Japanese banks had avoided divulging the true extent of what is believed to over a trillion dollars in bad loans made by the Jusen. The Jusen is a group of 7 Japanese housing and loan companies that were created in 1970 to provide loans to Japanese citizens that wished to purchase homes. These Japanese companies were also accused of loaning the money to real estate speculators that were linked to the infamous "YAKUZA", known by the Japanese for racketeering.
             Though five years have gone by the exact value of the bad loans is still not known, it is believed that housing loan companies were crushed in the early 1900's as bad loans rose to at least $77 billion and accounted for more than 75% of their total portfolio. Daiwa bank and the Ministry of Finance of Japan were accused of waiting too long to notify the U.S. of the losses, for fear that the financial-market anxiety would raise question about the Japanese banking stability. The Japanese answer to the problem was to try and hide the losses using shell companies.
             Furthermore, these shell companies are only the tip of the iceberg. According to the Ministry of Finance, the official bad dept of the whole Japanese finance industry was reported at $349 billion, however, expert speculations reach up to 1 trillion. It appears that most the loses were incurred when executives within the Japanese finance industry failed to clear from their books huge amounts of real estate that have lost value when property market of Japan collapsed in the early 1900's.
             The Prime Minister, at the time, Ryutaro Hashimoto originally postponed debates on what had been a no-questions-asked $6.85 billion bailout of the housing-loans companies. However, to help solve the problem the
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