International justice has come to be a prominent feature of the international scene since the end of the Cold War and will remain so, although significant limitations have emerged on what can be achieved.

 

The credit quality of Japanese industrial corporations is likely to stabilize in 2010. Japanese corporations, particularly those in manufacturing, appear to have weathered the worst of the period following the severe deterioration in the global economy, which was precipitated by the Lehman shock in 2008. Standard&Poor's Ratings Services is of the opinion that the performance of Japanese corporations generally bottomed out in the first half of fiscal 2009 (April 1, 2009, to Sept. 30, 2009), and expects their credit quality to stabilize further in 2010. We believe that corporations' financial performance is stabilizing to an extent, and that we have passed the peak of ratings downgrades and downward revisions to outlooks. Indeed, we are of the opinion that

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