With the initiation of financial sector reforms in the early 1990s, various steps were taken to deregulate the lending rates of commercial banks. First, the credit limit size classes of scheduled commercial banks, on which administered rates were prescribed, were compressed into three slabs in April 1993.
The salient feature of Japanese households’ asset holding is the high proportion of life insurance coupled with the low share of investment trusts and government bonds. 5  I once carried out a simulation analysis on longer-term development of the external balance between Japan and the United States in the ageing process.