Word: aso
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...someone who is expected to meet with Hillary Clinton during her first trip to Asia as U.S. Secretary of State, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso appears to be a host not yet ready for the party. Japan's economy continues to shrivel, the government remains gridlocked as elections loom, and public approval for Aso's administration is plunging. Even influential former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is criticizing Aso's performance, though both are members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party...
...Aso's woes have an obvious cause: the public perception is that his administration has failed to come up with strong enough medicine to counteract the country's increasingly dire economic plight. The world's second-largest economy shrank at an alarming annualized rate of 12.7% last quarter, its worst quarterly contraction since the 1974 oil shock. Exports also fell an unprecedented 13.9%, while the unemployment rate shot up to 4.4% in December, reaching levels not seen since World War II. "There is no doubt that the economy is in its worst state in the postwar period," said Economic...
...Little wonder that fewer than one in 10 Japanese support Aso, according to a recent poll by Nippon Television. His approval rating of 9.7% is the lowest since former Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori bottomed out at 8.6% in February 2001. (Mori resigned two months later.) Despite efforts to jumpstart economic growth, including a controversial proposal to hand out $21.7 billion to the Japanese public, many think Aso hasn't done enough. "We have a once-in-a-hundred-year crisis and the policy response is not even average," says Jesper Koll, president and CEO of Tantallon Research Japan. "The people...
...Aso recently hurt his own cause by remarking that he did not support the privatization of Japan's huge postal savings system - a key financial reform that Koizumi pushed through in 2005. Koizumi said on Feb. 12 that Aso's comments made him "flabbergasted to the point that I want to laugh." Koizumi also expressed doubts about Aso's stimulus package and his ability to lead the LDP in upcoming parliamentary elections. Gerald Curtis, professor of political science at Columbia University, says there is an obvious rift in the LDP. Koizumi's attack on Aso was a way of "throwing...
...global foray, many of its mergers and acquisitions languished because overseas employees chafed under the strictures of Japanese management. In the same way, unless Japan relaxes its rigid immigration policies, cultivating foreign Japanophiles will be a waste of time. Indeed, in moving beyond Japan's insular past, Prime Minister Aso might do well to take inspiration from a cuddly cat. Hello Kitty, it turns out, may not be ethnically Japanese. Her surname is not Suzuki or Sato but White. Her parents are named George and Mary. Yet the mouthless feline has prospered as one of Japan's most successful exports...