← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Petr
Thread ID: 20357 | Posts: 6 | Started: 2005-09-23
2005-09-23 14:40 | User Profile
[I]I was surprised by this information... I thought that Japan's economy was in healthier shape.[/I]
[url]http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050923/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_government_debt[/url]
[FONT=Arial] [SIZE=5]Japan's National Debt Hits Record High [/SIZE]
TOKYO - Japan's government debt, already the highest in the industrialized world, rose 1.7 percent to a record high of 795.8 trillion yen ($7.1 trillion) at the end of June, according to a report released by the Finance Ministry.
The latest figure marked an increase of 14.3 trillion yen from the end of March , the ministry said Thursday. The amount is equivalent to about 6.24 million yen ($55,900) for every Japanese.
[B]Japan has relied on government bond issues to make up for falling tax revenues, turning into one of the world's most indebted countries.[/B]
[B]Japan's public debt burden is almost 160 percent of its GDP and already the highest in the industrialized world.[/B]
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, voted back to office following a landslide win in the Sept. 11 lower house elections, has pledged to improve the country's finances by reining in public spending and creating a smaller government.
A package of bills that would privatize Japan's massive postal service, set to be approved during a special parliamentary session that began Wednesday, has been the cornerstone of Koizumi's reform agenda.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial]Advisers to the government have also been mulling ways to raise taxes when the nation's economic recovery takes firmer root.[/FONT]
2005-09-23 17:50 | User Profile
I guess the japs thought the 1980s would last forever.
2005-09-23 22:04 | User Profile
Their priorities are askew. Privatize the postal service? Why? One of the few necessary functions of government is to ensure an orderly delivery of the mail, a core function of any modern society. Stream line the postal service, make merit based performance the norm, reduce it in size, sure, but privatize it? All that does is drive up the cost for the average citizen. And it hardly enables an effective mail service.
Trivia: U.S. Route 1 was originally The Post Road . . . as in, The Post, what the Brits call the mail.
AE
[QUOTE=Petr] [font=Arial]A package of bills that would privatize Japan's massive postal service, set to be approved during a special parliamentary session that began Wednesday, has been the cornerstone of Koizumi's reform agenda. [/font]
2005-09-23 23:10 | User Profile
I wonder if the Japanese pay interest on their debt like we do?
2005-10-03 02:54 | User Profile
but the trade surplus is pretty good
2005-10-03 10:09 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Angeleyes]Their priorities are askew. Privatize the postal service? Why? One of the few necessary functions of government is to ensure an orderly delivery of the mail, a core function of any modern society. Stream line the postal service, make merit based performance the norm, reduce it in size, sure, but privatize it? All that does is drive up the cost for the average citizen. And it hardly enables an effective mail service.
Trivia: U.S. Route 1 was originally The Post Road . . . as in, The Post, what the Brits call the mail.
AE
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The post office doesn't just deliver the mail, it is also BY FAR the biggest bank in Japan, with a trillion in assets, if memory serves. The Japanese like to buy Post Office bonds as easy savings instruments, and just mind boggling amounts of money are held in post office accounts. They have crappy oversight, and as you can imagine they're subject to political pull, and so consequently the post office made a lot of really bad loans.
That's really the problem. The post office does other stuff, too, aside from delivering mail. And they don't do it well. Indeed, I think that mail delivery is the very thing Koizumi would leave them.
The consensus is that if Japan wants to fix its finances, it will have to start with the post office finance mess.