Chuck Hagel: “I want to take this body on a quick trip to the other part of the world to talk very briefly about what is happening in…”

“I want to take this body on a quick trip to the other part of the world to talk very briefly about what is happening in Southeast Asia, Japan, China, Russia, and how it is impacting and affecting all of us in this country, how it will affect the geopolitical economic dynamics the rest of this year and on into the next year and, actually, on into the next century. We start at Southeast Asia where the Asian crisis has become a significant crisis, stretching past that region of the world, now up into Japan, where we find in Japan that its economic planning agency confirmed that Japan is now in a serious recession. Last quarter, Japan found that its economy fell by an annualized rate of 5.3 percent. The yen is at an 8-year low against the dollar. The yen has dropped 50 percent in 3 years. The Japanese find themselves essentially without a credible banking system. The President of South Korea was here this week addressing a joint meeting of Congress.”