The Japanese defied the Crash of ’87...

The Japanese defied the Crash of ’87 by snapping up costly stock in Nippon Telegraph & Telephone--priced at $18,900 a share--floated in a record selloff of state assets. Tokyo investors rushed to buy the stock even though it is among the most expensive in the world at 2.55 million Japanese yen a share. “About 98% of the shares have been sold already,” said a broker at a Japanese brokerage firm that is underwriting the sale of the 1.95 million NTT shares. The government will get an estimated $37 billion from the sale of its shares in the privatized firm, analysts said.