Word: koizumi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Koizumi's challenge is to orchestrate another bailout of Japan's banks (the fifth since 1998) while forcing them to call in nonperforming loans. For four years, Washington has been urging Japan to resolve its banking woes by setting up a government bailout fund, as the U.S. did during its savings-and-loan crisis in the 1980s. But Japan's bank debacle dwarfs the S&L crisis in both size and political complexity. Real reform means unraveling decades of interlocking commitments blessed by a system that rewards support with favors...
...that Koizumi has done nothing. Analysts applaud his decision to guarantee only the first $75,000 in new time deposits, beginning April 1. The regulation is a warning that Tokyo cannot back the status quo forever. Still, as bankruptcies and layoffs increase, it's harder to introduce tough reform measures. "They are writing off loans, but the bad loans are growing faster," says C. Fred Bergsten, director of the Institute for International Economics in Washington. "That feeds a lack of confidence that brings more nonperforming loans--and that is a death spiral...
...says Yoshiharu Nakashima, who ought to know: he's a pawn-shop owner in Tokyo's Ueno district. When U.S. President George W. Bush visits next week, he'll undoubtedly spend some backroom time telling the Japanese to get their acts together. His host will be Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who achieved rock-star popularity by promising to do just that, but whose public support vanished this month when he caved in to Japan's troglodytic Old Guard - the bureaucrats and Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) hardliners - robbing the population of the hope of change. At the end of next month...
...reinvigorated Japan's economic infrastructure. As a result, no entrepreneurial phoenix is rising from Japan's industrial ashes. Real-estate values are at 1982 levels. Manufacturing has been siphoned off to China and other cheaper countries and unemployment is at a post-war high of 5.6%. A survey by Koizumi's office finds that 65% of the population are feeling insecure and fearful of the future - higher than at any point since 1958. "Our wealth," says former Vice Minister of Finance Eisuke Sakakibara, now director of an economic think tank and professor at Keio University, "is slipping away...
...drama now revolves around what Koizumi's government can do. On a tough-love trip to Tokyo last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill warned that if Japan didn't do some stiff brooming fast it could face "economic upheaval." In the Japanese context the meaning was clear: a loss of confidence, bank runs, financial collapse. Tokyo's greatest hope is a stiff restructuring of banks - one that keeps them afloat while at the same time forces them to drop deadbeat creditors - that doesn't freak out savers...