When Japan finally crashes and burns it will have world-wide impact and if it happens in the next two years not even a shooting war may be enough to save President Bush's second term. Where are you going to get the electronics for modern weapons if Asia is in depression?
The Japanese don't get to vote for the president of the United States. The headline on this article should have been clarified: Prices are down to 1980s levels in Japan, which has been an economic basket case for the last 5 years. In the US, stock prices have only backtracked to around 1998 levels. And given that the entire insane runup of stock prices in the late '90s was due to the dotcom fraud craze, seeing it fall back down to proper levels is the best thing that could have happened to us. Almost everyone that "lost their life savings" were either addicted amateur day-traders or people whose wealth only doubled or tripled on paper within an incredibly short period of time, when it really should have only been going up a few percent a year as it normally does. The mistake was corrected, and everyone still has about as much money as they started with before the bubble, unless they gambled it all away instead of cashing out. If they were too inept or greedy to know when it was time to sell and take their profits, that's entirely their own fault. And for those whose entire portfolios are locked up in a 401(k) or something that they can't and could not touch, it was all just numbers on a statement anyway.