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Capital flight, soaring borrowing costs, tanking currency and stocks and a central bank forced to pump vast amounts of cash into local banks -- that is what Japan may have to contend with if it fails to tackle its snowballing debt.
Not long ago such doomsday scenarios would be dismissed in Tokyo as fantasies of ill-informed foreigners sitting on loss-making bets "shorting Japan."
Today this is what is on bureaucrats' minds in Japan's centre of political and economic power.
"It's scary when you think what could happen if there's triple-selling of bonds, stocks and the yen. The chance of this happening is bigger than markets think," says a senior official. (Reuters)