Word: reformer
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Whatever Bush may have thought of Lay, there's no doubt that each was useful to the other. As a free-market conservative, Bush championed causes dear to Lay's heart: energy deregulation and tort reform. And Enron has been Bush's largest campaign donor. Lay hired James Baker and Robert Mosbacher, prominent members of the first Bush Administration, after they left office. During George W.'s run for the White House, the candidate's staff and family used Enron jets 14 times (though Bush himself never...
...mutually admiring game of catch by the pool. This week, as George W. Bush flies to Tokyo, the first stop in a one-week Asian tour that includes Beijing and Seoul, he has to be wondering if it's time to play hardball. Koizumi, despite his bold promises of reform when he took office 10 months ago, has accomplished little. Japan's decade-long economic slide is only picking up speed, and Bush Administration officials are concerned that further inaction in Tokyo may trigger an economic crisis with global reverberations...
...worse things get in Japan, the harder it is for a leader like Koizumi to get anything done. Although he cruised into office 10 months ago as the crusading anti-establishmentarian who would truly reform Japan, the dashing, outspoken Prime Minister with the finely tuned coif is in trouble. When he fired popular Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka last month under pressure from anti-reform conservatives, his approval rating plunged 20% from last year's high of 80%. As confidence in his leadership sagged, the Nikkei stock average hit an 18-year low. "If he wouldn't support...
...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...