Posted on 11/07/2009 7:57:12 PM PST by Saije
IN the boardrooms of Japan’s top corporations can be heard the chuckles of disbelief over the new government’s people-first agenda to jump-start the economy. The sniggers, however, soon give way to a sober realization among members of the so-called Keidanren: the old ways that gave birth to, and nurtured Japan Inc., may soon vanish.
That is because the odds of the new government’s economic gamble paying off may be slim, risking Japan’s slide into ruin.
“Fraternity,” blurted an amused Atsushi Saito, referring to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s bedrock for a new Japan.
The president of the Tokyo Stock Exchange could barely hide his skepticism, as Asia’s biggest stock market in late October still hasn’t joined Wall Street’s rebound from the Lehman Brothers collapse.
The Topix was at 900 points, or way below its peak of above 2,000 points in the 1970s when the market rode on the export boom of high-tech Japan Inc.
“The new government’s proposal has not been digested very well, so the stock market is in a puzzle,” Saito said.
For the bourse’s chief executive officer, the “puzzle” of why Japan has yet to recover from a financial crisis that emanated from the Anglo-Saxon world can be explained by the new government’s thrust.
What Saito means is the Hatoyama government’s planned shift from an export-led to a domestic market-oriented economy.
The shift is backed by a popular mandate, after the left-wing coalition led by Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) won overwhelmingly with more than 300 out of the close to 500 seats of the Lower House during elections held two months ago.
But this envisioned shift is unnerving the Tokyo bourse, whose bellwether listed firms had prospered under the old economic tack pursued by successive governments of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
(Excerpt) Read more at manilatimes.net ...
This does not differ one iota from what they have been alleging for....40 years? And it never has been actually undertaken.
Japan, lifestyle superpower....ho-hum, oh sure......zzzzzzzz....!
The one that usually follows is, "and move the national capital out of Tokyo..." and then other predictions that resemble predictions that we'll soon be living like George Jetson.
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