JIN-501 -- Admit when you have a problem - the economy I mean.

Disclaimer:
***The editor-in-chief doesn't endorse gambling, drinking or taking
excessive amounts of cough medicine at G7 summit press conferences.***

It's old news now but the resignation of Shoichi Nakagawa as finance
minister is providing an endless amount of fodder for the media both
here and abroad. Nakagawa, who is notorious within political circles
for his drinking habits, stills insists that he simply took too much
cough medicine and sipped a bit of wine.

If Nakagawa was looking for an excuse he should have just pointed to
the state of the economy. That's enough to drive anyone to drink, and
no-one more so than the finance minister.

For those who missed it, here it is again:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gnDd6UxwtM...obe.com/?p=8832

I'm going to have a little sportsman's wager with all the JIN readers
now – this really is anyone's game here – Which LDP politician will
resign in disgrace next? Please send your answers to:
[email protected] . The winner will be announced in the JIN that
follows the next resignation.

Of course, Nakagawa is not the only public figure who would be feeling
the pressure -- Bank of Japan Governor Masaaki Shirakawa is under
equal amounts of stress at the moment. He seems to be holding it
together somewhat better than Nakagawa. Shirakawa and the independent
BoJ have come under increased pressure from the ruling party to print
more yen to make sure the currency stays where it is. Some within the
government mentioned a while back that they would even consider
creating a new currency to combat hyper deflation.

At last check the yen was at about 93.5 per dollar. In six months the
currency has seen a 17 percent increase making life extremely harsh
for the nation's exporters. Nissan has announced that it is facing its
first loss in nine years.

The BoJ yesterday widened its asset-purchase program, buying corporate
bonds for the first time to make sure that a shortage of credit
doesn't worsen the recession. The bank announced it will buy $10.7
billion in corporate bonds.

Bloomberg reported that the central bank will buy 3 trillion yen of
commercial paper as well as providing unlimited collateral-backed
loans to financial institutions until September.

"We implemented these measures to ease concerns companies are having
about funding," Shirakawa told Bloomberg. "Unfortunately, we have to
assume that conditions for corporate financing will remain very
severe."

There have been lots of "records" and "worsts " and "mosts" since
Lehman's went down….

So here's one more from the quoted Bloomberg article.

"The economy shrank at an annual 12.7 percent pace last quarter, the
most since 1974."

If I was the finance minister, I would have printed that out and taken
it to the press conference.

Michael Condon
Editor-in-chief

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