Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at the Asia Society in New York on Friday on the eve of her departure for a trip to East Asia that will include stops in Japan, Indonesia, South Korea, and China.Her speech is worth a look, because I do think she succeeds at indicating how the Obama administration …
Continue reading "We are supposed to be the problem solvers"
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" …
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.
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 …
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: …
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 …
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 …
"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 …
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 …
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 …
Tobias S. Harris 