Kind of like that old man in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

We had Moody’s looking at downgrading Morgan Stanley’s debt, followed by their stock tanking, so their Mitsubishi UFJ was demanding more favorable terms to make a capital infusion, which led to
the Treasury department offering a promise protection to the Japanese investors, which means that group of government acronyms was just about ready to seize them.

After much hand wringing, and many attempts to make a buck off the situation by people not directly involved in the deal, they sealed the deal today.

One of the consequences of the collapse of the Japanese financial markets in the 1990s is that many of the companies are cash rich. They had to be to survive 15 years of very tight credit.

We may see a lot more of this for Japanese entities as a result.