One of the great growth industries of the last decade has been the prediction business. There is nothing, it seems, that the book-buying public or talk-show host loves so much as a new theory as to which country is on the up and which is on the down.
The whirligig of time soon puts paid to most of these theories. Yesterday's dog is tomorrow's phoenix. The only importance of this game of global winners and losers is that they affect mood, and not only in the financial markets.At this moment, America is very much on the up and its old competitors, Europe and Japan, are very much on the down. It is not only a reflection of economics, although the contrast between a growing United States and a recessionary Japan and Western Europe is striking enough. It is also something to do with the "feel-good" factor.
To an extent the Europeans have never understood, Japan got under America's skin. The overwhelming success of Japanese exports - particularly in those markets such as cars and electronics, which the U.S. had always regarded as peculiarly its own - challenged American confidence in a way Germany or France, and certainly Britain, have never done.
Japan hit the United States where it hurt most, in the efficiency of its production processes and the effectiveness of its marketing. Worse, it did so out of its culture, not individual flair - a group approach that emphasized consensus and community.
Where at first the threat could be dismissed as the product of unfair trading practices, the obvious superiority of the Japanese industrial effort gradually produced a gloomy sense of a declining America going under an unstoppable and maligned foreign power.
All that has changed within the past year. America has found it can beat Japan at its own game. Detroit is on the move once more. America's computer and electronics industries feel they have not only survived but also are now positively thriving.
The United States is leading the field by far in the number of personal computers per head of population, the extent of networking and the advances in interactive systems. At the same time, the revolution that has gone on in U.S. distribution and marketing, the extent to which layers of headquarters and backroom staff have been removed, has given business the comfortable sense that it has swallowed a pill that over-cosseted Europe and overstaffed Japan have yet to do.
In Japan, meanwhile, the mood is the opposite. Never - not even at the height of the energy crisis 20 years ago - has there been such a prevailing sense of gloom among managers and officials.
The corruption scandals have undermined Japan's self-esteem. The new government, meant to clean out the stables, has instead got mired in the mess. The economy is still in decline, for all the brave statements by ministers, while the heady days of export success are being foreshortened by an obstinately high currency.
"The government came in promising political reform, a curbing of the civil service and a policy for the economy in that order," says one of the most senior officials. "Instead, it is now the economy that is of most importance and nothing can be done until it is solved."
"Solving" it will not be as easy as on previous occasions. For the first time, business leaders accept there will have to be an end to "lifetime employment" policies and a real shake-out of staff.
There is also a feeling that the extent of recession and the collapse in the stock market are bound to affect the banking and financial system.
This is nothing to feel smug about, and certainly nothing to encourage the kind of prediction of reviving facism that commentators have ascribed to Germany. That isn't the nature of the problem. What is the problem is the appallingly bad relations between Japan and America at the moment.
With the uncertainties over the future leadership of China and the row over North Korean nuclear ambitions, a confident and extrovert Japan is essential. So is a good relationship between Tokyo and Washington.
In the end, Japan will get over its economic woes. History has shown that it never pays to underestimate the Japanese when they feel isolated and in a corner. But this is not a good time for it to be so uneasy, or for America to be quite so triumphant.