Did Koizumi Junichiro just kill the Aso government with a laugh?Speaking at a meeting of the Diet members' group for the promotion of postal privatization, an LDP study group featuring a number of leading reformists, including Nakagawa Hidenao, Shiozaki Yasuhisa, Takebe Tsutomu, and Ishihara Nobuteru, Mr. Koizumi commented on Aso Taro's recent remarks about "revising" …
Month: February 2009
Exchange on the alliance
East Asia Forum has some comments by Aurelia George Mulgan regarding the article I co-wrote with Doug Turner for Policy Innovations last year, along with my response to Professor George Mulgan.
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Ozawa
The US State Department is reportedly sounding out the DPJ on the possibility of a meeting between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and DPJ President Ozawa Ichiro when Secretary Clinton visits Japan next week.Sankei reports that it would be the first ever meeting between a US secretary of state and the leader of a Japanese …
The accounting reaper cometh (Noah Smith)
A specter is haunting East Asia. Consumption is falling in the world's "deficit" countries, as American and British consumers rebuild their balance sheets. The global current-account and capital-account imbalances are thus coming under immense strain. An accounting identity states that for the imbalances to vanish, one of two things must happen in the "surplus" countries: …
A new course on the abductees
Kawamura Takeo, the chief cabinet secretary, told reporters Monday that the government is working to arrange a meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the families of Japanese abducted by North Korea.As MTC wrote of a dinner Secretary Clinton had with Asia experts in advance of her trip, "Members of the Bush Administration …
Just a flesh wound
Speaking in the lower house's budget committee on Monday, Aso Taro said, "If you compare our economic conditions to other countries, our wounds are shallow."Naturally I immediately thought of nothing so much as this:I think Jun Okumura is on to something when he writes that the prime minister isn't a "total nincompoop," just in his …
A twenty years’ crisis
"Japan is an economy that is almost certainly producing well below its productive capacity - that is, the immediate problem facing Japan is one of demand, not supply. And it gives every appearance of being in a liquidity trap - that is, conventional monetary policy appears to have been pushed to its limits, yet the …
The LDP fiddles while its kingdom burns
As LDP members increasingly come to terms with what looks to be certain defeat in this year's general election — described in graphic terms by MTC as the LDP's "thrashing about and coughing up blood" — the party's leaders continue to struggle in vain for some way to avoid destruction.As I mentioned in a discussion …
Is she or isn’t she?
Despite reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be going to Asia on her first foreign trip, none seem to have the State Department's confirmation that she will in fact be going to Japan, South Korea, and China in the coming weeks.CNN cites "diplomats familiar with the planning."The LA Times cites "a foreign diplomat …
Can the LDP — or anyone — eradicate amakudari?
The Aso government, looking to hasten the passage of the FY2009 budget (the third stage of Prime Minister Aso's plan to overcome the recession), has promised to accelerate the timetable for introducing the ban on the practice of amakudari and the related practice of watari, whereby a retired bureaucrat wanders to other employers who might …
Continue reading Can the LDP — or anyone — eradicate amakudari?
Tobias S. Harris 