Tokyo's Nikkei hits 18-year low, sentiment "awful"

Yes. This is rather appropriate.

I don't understand how you can blame Bush for 19 years of a flat japanese stock market or the 13 years of the nikkei bear market.

I'm not blaming Bush for Japan. I'm saying that Bush's economic policies are very similar to Japan's past twelve years of demand management. Everything focuses on spending, rather than investment.

Wasn't the collapse of the Japanese stock market in the late 1920's one of the fundamental causes of the panic that spread to Wall Street?

I know, I know - "it can't happen again" - but it is strange how much our internet bubble looked like past basic falls in the financial markets, even with all our "safeguards".

bump for later reading. I have to get my asbestos undies on for my opinions.

That was the most inane post I've read here in a while.

RE #18

I don't see any way for Japan to get out of current economic problem unless some drastic political upheaval like Meiji Restoration or Feb. 24 Rebellion. The political process stopped working. Without it, no real reform can be done. Due to 10 year delay, any restructuring will be really painful. I even read that Japanese government is readying a lesigslation which will limit the amount of deposits that will be salvaged by depositors in the event that something will happen to their banks. I heard that the limit is 10 million yen.

So I seriously wonder if Japan can travel any mid-line course as you suggested. Do you perhaps know something I do not know ?

You have excellent, thoughtful, deep and rather intriguing analysis and thought. Good job.

It's already happening.

TOKYO, Sept. 1, 2002 -- Voters in central Japan reelected an unconventional governor today in an election seen as an indication that Japanese remain critical of old-style politics and pork-barrel construction projects.

Yasuo Tanaka (46) won an overwhelming victory in a special election held to fill the governorship of Nagano prefecture. He was ousted from the position in July after halting two huge dam construction projects.

Final results showed Tanaka with 65 percent of the vote and more than double the tally of the closet of his five opponents.

At a celebration at a ski facility in the village of Asahi, Tanaka said he believed the election was a mandate "to carry out prefectural reform with no secrets, with firm resolve and ability to act."

Tanaka, who was elected in October 2000, had been seen as a symbol of the same demand for change that brought Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to power the following year. Both are young, electric reformers who ran against the old guard and special interests, chief among them the construction industry, which dominates public spending.

But where Koizumi has compromised with vested powers and is seen to have made little headway on promised reforms, Tanaka took on contractors and the legislature, which has close ties to the industry. The assembly dismissed him July 5 in a no-confidence vote, but he promptly ran again.

Political analysts said Tanaka's reelection was as much a referendum on his style as on the construction projects. Tanaka's brash populism and odd antics have made him the focus of an intense love-him-or-hate-him division in Nagano prefecture, site of the 1998 Winter Olympics.

Tanaka, 46, who has written prize-winning novels, burst into the governorship after earning recognition as a keen critic and community activist.

"There is an expectation that he will change something," said Yasunori Sone, a professor of politics at Keio University in Tokyo.

The election results are also an imperfect referendum on the public's appetite for reform that put Koizumi in power, analysts said. The prime minister's once-soaring popularity has dropped sharply as he has been unable to make the kinds of changes he had promised in the financial and political systems.

Politics in rural areas such as Nagano have long revolved around a system in which public officials vie to get more money from the central government for massive public works projects, even when those projects have limited use.

But increasingly, critics say, the system is paving the countryside without supporting local economies. Nagano was left with expensive sports facilities and little economic benefit after the 1998 Olympics. Tanaka campaigned against the dam projects and has opposed an expensive children's facility.

Since Tanaka became governor in 2000, the proportion of public works spending in the prefectural budget has dropped to 24 percent from 31 percent. His opponents were enraged when he unilaterally canceled the dam projects, and by what they say is his failure to offer alternative solutions. "The Nagano economy is in a serious condition," Kyuma Kubota, head of a construction industry association in Nagano, said recently. "It's not like all dam projects and public works are bad. We understand it is the direction in Japan to do away with public works. But with him, the decisions are made without any discussion. He is, excuse me for saying it, self-righteous, Hitler-like." Aware of such sentiments, Tanaka has made a gesture of reconciliation and promised to meet with each of his opponents in the local legislature. But some people were skeptical Tanaka could learn to work with the assembly. One legislator, Yukio Kotagiri, 88, said tonight that he will resign because of Tanaka's reelection.

Please note the most recent post of an article I attached to this thread.