xcel
02-16-2009, 06:10 PM
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/2/Japanese_Flag_30x22.jpg A YouTube video of Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa is highlighting the government's impotence in dealing with collapsing exports and the rising yen. (businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2009/gb20090216_659920.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis)
Japanese Trade Minister drunk or simply out of it?
http://www.youtube.com/v/d1p3X-NVM2I&hl=en&fs=1
Sean O’Grady – Business Week (businessweek.com) – Feb. 16, 2009
The Japanese are getting hit harder than most with their export only growth practices. -- Ed.
A slurring, muddled performance by Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa at the Group of Seven meeting in Rome over the weekend is attracting plenty of attention in Japan. At a news conference on Feb. 14, the minister, an ally of Prime Minister Taro Aso, appeared to be drunk.
Explaining away Japan's dreadful economic performance is likely to prove rather more challenging. Stung by collapsing exports, a surging Japanese yen, and ineffective government, Japan's Cabinet Office today announced that Japan's gross domestic product slumped at an astonishing annualized rate of 12.7% between October and December. The fall is more than most Tokyo economists expected and marked the biggest quarterly slump since 1974. "There's no doubt that the economy is in its worst state in the postwar period," Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Kaoru Yosano said in Tokyo...
Exports in a Free Fall
As the government says, external events are having a massive impact on Japan's economy, which until November 2007 was experiencing its longest period of expansion since World War II. In particular, as the slump in demand for Japanese autos and electronics products has spread from the U.S. and Europe to China and other previously fast-growing markets, exports have collapsed at a unprecedented pace, falling 13.6% compared to the previous quarter in the three months through December...
That's causing Japanese companies to take drastic action. Last week, Pioneer and Nissan said they would cut 10,000 and 20,000 employees, respectively. Toyota, like many Japanese companies, is shedding thousands of contract workers and said on Feb. 6 it would show its first loss since 1950. "We're facing a once-in-a-hundred-years crisis," Akio Toyoda, who will take over as the company's president in June, said last month. Toyota is also trimming U.S. labor costs...
For all that, Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo says positives can emerge from the current crisis. First, he says Japan and other Asian economies are learning that they cannot rely on uninterrupted export-based growth and begin to take necessary, but difficult, steps accordingly. "For 60 years, Asia has had a single model of keeping currencies low, making good products, selling them to Americans and getting rich," he says. "We have to reinvent ourselves." … http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2009/gb20090216_659920.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis
Japanese Trade Minister drunk or simply out of it?
http://www.youtube.com/v/d1p3X-NVM2I&hl=en&fs=1
Sean O’Grady – Business Week (businessweek.com) – Feb. 16, 2009
The Japanese are getting hit harder than most with their export only growth practices. -- Ed.
A slurring, muddled performance by Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa at the Group of Seven meeting in Rome over the weekend is attracting plenty of attention in Japan. At a news conference on Feb. 14, the minister, an ally of Prime Minister Taro Aso, appeared to be drunk.
Explaining away Japan's dreadful economic performance is likely to prove rather more challenging. Stung by collapsing exports, a surging Japanese yen, and ineffective government, Japan's Cabinet Office today announced that Japan's gross domestic product slumped at an astonishing annualized rate of 12.7% between October and December. The fall is more than most Tokyo economists expected and marked the biggest quarterly slump since 1974. "There's no doubt that the economy is in its worst state in the postwar period," Economic and Fiscal Policy Minister Kaoru Yosano said in Tokyo...
Exports in a Free Fall
As the government says, external events are having a massive impact on Japan's economy, which until November 2007 was experiencing its longest period of expansion since World War II. In particular, as the slump in demand for Japanese autos and electronics products has spread from the U.S. and Europe to China and other previously fast-growing markets, exports have collapsed at a unprecedented pace, falling 13.6% compared to the previous quarter in the three months through December...
That's causing Japanese companies to take drastic action. Last week, Pioneer and Nissan said they would cut 10,000 and 20,000 employees, respectively. Toyota, like many Japanese companies, is shedding thousands of contract workers and said on Feb. 6 it would show its first loss since 1950. "We're facing a once-in-a-hundred-years crisis," Akio Toyoda, who will take over as the company's president in June, said last month. Toyota is also trimming U.S. labor costs...
For all that, Richard Koo, chief economist at Nomura Research Institute in Tokyo says positives can emerge from the current crisis. First, he says Japan and other Asian economies are learning that they cannot rely on uninterrupted export-based growth and begin to take necessary, but difficult, steps accordingly. "For 60 years, Asia has had a single model of keeping currencies low, making good products, selling them to Americans and getting rich," he says. "We have to reinvent ourselves." … http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2009/gb20090216_659920.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_news+%2B+analysis