Word: shirakawa
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...Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the opposition party that controls the Upper House, finally approved Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda's third choice - Masaaki Shirakawa - for governor of the Bank of Japan. Shirakawa, 58, became the deputy bank governor in mid-March and then took over as interim governor after former central bank governor Toshihiko Fukui retired from his five-year term on March 19. The DPJ refused the two previous nominees - Toshiro Muto and Koji Tanami - over concerns that their ties to the Finance Ministry might compromise the bank's independence. The lack of a permanent leader...
...Perhaps the activism of the DPJ is slowly working. Fukuda appears to be starting to make concessions: for instance, the DPJ has recently indicated they could look favorably upon the nomination of deputy governor Shirakawa for the top seat. And on the gasoline surcharge, Fukuda announced on March 27 that he would free up the gas tax revenues now dedicated to building roads for general spending from fiscal 2009 to 2010, in an attempt to break the deadlock over the gasoline surcharge issue - although it didn't work. Neither did the proposal of Hiroshi Watanabe, the person Fukuda nominated...
...course, this doesn't mean the country is facing economic chaos. Central bank policies will continue to be carried out by Masaaki Shirakawa, who was approved by parliament last week as a deputy BoJ governor and who will temporarily take over for Fukui. But the Diet's inability to compromise with Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and choose a new bank chief is seen by many as unsettling evidence that Japan has reached political gridlock and could face serious problems in the months ahead. "This is the kind of thing harms the image of Japanese governability," says Jun Iio, director...
...Alan J. Heege (United States), Alan G. MacDiarmid (United States), Hideki Shirakawa (Japan...
...WHAT IT MEANS FOR THE REST OF US: Scientists once spent a lot of time explaining why plastic did not conduct electricity. Heege, MacDiarmid and Shirakawa, however, won their Nobel for proving that plastics (or polymers) can be manipulated into a conductive state. The Nobel judges call the discovery critical not only to chemists and physicists, but also to ordinary folk; the conductive polymers are already in use on cell phone displays; in photo labs, where anti-static substances are applied to film; and in electromagnetic radiation shields on computer screens...