Once again, thanks for the references. I haven't read anything by Chalmers Johnson since the 1980s. My study of Japan is primarily focused on Meiji and earlier. And you? It would seem that you are in academia, with an interdisciplinary approach.  
 ::::I agree with you about the financial system, but that is a corrupting force, not integral to the model. Recall that it was the deregulation started under Reagan and culminated under Clinton that undid the Depression era regime to the detriment of society at large and to the benefit of the corporatist oligarchy which is trying to bring about a neo-feudalistic form of corporatism instead of the modern, dynamic social model based on individualism and the society-individual feedback loops inherent in the dynamic model. The empire model is something I would agree with, but the analogy itself doesn't take one beyond a basic understanding that we are in an era where there are parallels to that. Before those deregulatory moves, there was more stability and less funny money. 
 ::::I once criticized the collusion between the finance sector and politicos trying to make it look like they were doing a good job on the economy so that they could get re-elected. I find the term funny-money economy useful for talking about the house-of-cards created by the finance sector and corrupt politicos, both of whom are out for short term gain.  
 ::::And the increasing percent of the GDP related to the military industrial complex is another aspect, but that has only become relevant after the cold war, because before that what enabled the USA to excel vis-a-vis the Soviet Union was the fact that the government could fund private research, channel the bulk of the finds into the defense industry, but managing to see enough of the technology trickle down to the consumer level to both improve the lives of consumers and grow the economy. Now we have nothing but rising tuition at universities in many countries, and education is either beyond the purview of the average citizen or a bad investment because of the nepotism accompanying recentralization. All of these factors serve to short-circuit the feedback loops. 
 ::::In any case, rather than seeing the theoretical framework of the model as wrong, I see faults in the implementation. One salient feature of the Greek model is that political power was diffused throughout the citizenry; that is to say, it was thoroughly decentralized. One of the characteristics of the financialization phenomenon you describe is a recentralization of resources, which in turn generates a concomitant capacity for more centralized control. I think that Habermas has illustrated this with respect to the mass media in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere.  Ubikwit