Word: ldp
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...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, Japan's reform-repellent banks will close their yearly books and reveal whether their assets, many of them shares on the super-depressed stock exchange, are substantial enough for solvency. (There's serious talk...
...Today igusa is, well, straw. The farmers in and around Kagami ply an anachronistic endeavor propped up for decades by protectionism. When Japan was booming, the government thought it could have it all. Farmers, who traditionally voted for the long-ruling LDP, were shielded from competition from imports; Japan's consumers shouldered ridiculous bills for homegrown farm products. Today, thanks to the weak economy and the wrenching opening up of Japan's markets, tatami prices are half what they were 10 years ago. Farmers can't pay off the loans they were once encouraged to take. "Thirty farmers have committed...
...from the bubble period, troubling enough at the time, has grown exponentially with bankruptcies and the decline in the stock market. Kenneth Courtis, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs in Tokyo, describes "Himalayas of debt crashing down on the economy." In January, Yoichi Masuzoe, a parliament member from the ruling LDP, gave voice to many unspoken fears when he pronounced, "By the end of March we will have a financial crisis - that is 100% true...
...only call on former Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa. In 1993, Hosokawa was a proto-Koizumi: a young, telegenic maverick, who promised to mend Japan's then newly burst bubble economy and reform old-style politics. And yes, he too had a youthful, blow-dried haircut. Hosokawa bolted from the LDP, cobbled together a coalition and became Prime Minister with Koizumi-like approval ratings. True to his word, he opened the protected rice market and introduced campaign-finance reform. But a minor scandal and an unwieldy coalition deflated Hosokawa. Eight months later, he resigned...
...This master plan, if carried out to its logical conclusion, will yield a special bonus for Koizumi: it will end patronage politics, and effectively destroy the traditional LDP. That's exactly why the Old Guard will resist his reforms. It's a matter of survival. For now, they're playing their cards close to the chest. Their few attempts at publicly berating Koizumi have backfired; those who dared have been inundated with hate mail and nasty phone calls. Instead, they're poised to start chipping away at Koizumi's program. Already, the bureaucrats, many of them allied with the conservatives...