Word: koizumi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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UNEMPLOYMENT At 5%, joblessness is at its highest level since folks started keeping track in 1955. Powerhouses like Toshiba, Fujitsu and Kyocera are the latest to shed staff, laying off tens of thousands of workers Koizumi's plan: Subsidies to companies that hire; more money for job retraining; recruiting young college grads and near-retirees to teach; a supplemental budget for public works spending Outlook: FAIR. Remedies aren't enough. Business failures, the global slowdown and banks calling in bad loans all mean more people will lose jobs...
...ANGRY NEIGHBORS Beijing and Seoul are furious with the nationalistic tone of Koizumi's administration, his visit to the Shinto shrine that honors Japan's war dead and his tacit approval of a revisionist textbook that waters down wartime aggression Koizumi's plan: Use personal charm in diplomatic tete-a-tetes with Asian counterparts Outlook: POOR. Korea's Kim Dae Jung and China's Jiang Zemin have snubbed his overtures. They want concessions before they'll talk. Giving in would make Koizumi look bad at home...
...GUARD Koizumi's biggest enemies are from within his own party, the Liberal Democrats. His reform agenda is designed to destroy the Establishment and their pork-barrel politics. They'll be chipping away at his plans every chance they get Koizumi's plan: Act the populist and use every attack against his agenda as a way to garner even more support. Cram through reforms before people realize just how bad things are Outlook: GOOD. They can make life difficult for Koizumi, but they don't offer any appealing alternative...
...MAKIKO TANAKA The fiery Foreign Minister?nicknamed "Troublemaker"?is the last person Koizumi needs to handle the weakest part of his portfolio, foreign policy. She has infuriated career diplomats and bureaucrats and muffed some basic diplomatic forays Koizumi's plan: He can't dump her; she's too popular inside Japan. So he'll send her on more overseas trips and lean on her to tone down the trash talk Outlook: O.K. Nobody in Japan really cares about foreign policy, so Tanaka provides an entertaining, if raucous, diversion...
...GLOBAL MELTDOWN The high-tech bust makes Japan's recovery tougher. Exports are falling, and domestic consumption is so weak that prices are falling and banks are sitting on mountains of bad debt Koizumi's plan: The central bank is in effect printing more money to try to stimulate the economy. Koizumi wants to force bad businesses to fail, meaning more short-term pain Outlook: POOR. His reform agenda is in peril because of the economic slide