August 31, 2010
To Atsushi Yamada of the Weekly AERA Editorial Department.
A man named Atsushi Yamada of the editorial department, who has written the lead article in this week’s issue of AERA under the enormous headline “The Age of One Dollar at 60 Yen Is Coming,” is truly beyond redemption.
This man, of all people, was one of the leading figures who began a great chorus of righteous indignation against the conclusion that had inevitably occurred to Kiichi Miyazawa in August 1992—that the only way to resolve the problem was to inject public funds into financial institutions—crying, “Why should the people’s hard-earned tax money be injected into vicious and unscrupulous banks?”…
Even now, I vividly remember thinking, “What an idiot this man is”…
The bitter regret of having wasted twenty years of my own life because of such a fool is beyond description.
He may rightly be called one of those principally responsible for bringing about “Japan’s Lost Two Decades.”
He continues to advance arguments steeped in deference to authority, and the thrust of his argument may be summarized as a defense of the Bank of Japan.
To answer him, one need only place before him the opinion of Suguru Niinomi, head of the Economic and Financial News Department, published on the front page of today’s Nikkei under the headline, “Japan’s Sense of Crisis Is Not Reaching the World,” and the truth will become immediately apparent.
…Anxiety Over “Piecemal Measures”
“Can Japan afford to continue responding with piecemeal measures?”
A former senior official of the U.S. Federal Reserve Board (FRB), who studied Japan’s financial crisis and deflation in detail, expresses concern.
The FRB’s analysis is that postponing the disposal of nonperforming loans and falling behind in monetary easing brought about Japan’s “Lost Two Decades.”
Europe and China have also treated Japan as a negative example and applied its lessons to their policy management.
Yet Japan itself refuses to learn from its failures.
…Omitted…
Yet Japan remains the world’s third-largest economy.
Former Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs Hiroshi Watanabe says that the foreign dignitaries he has met recently “are beginning to feel fear, rather than irritation, over Japan’s present condition.”
…The remainder is omitted…
The conclusion is entirely correct, so please read the front page of this morning’s Nikkei.
What is more, Yamada compares the present competition to weaken currencies to what occurred before the war.
Yamada, if you are going to bring up the prewar period, you should speak about how the Asahi Shimbun, too, poured out government-manufactured information, failed to convey the truth to the people, and drove them onto the battlefield with a single red conscription notice.
That, and that alone, is what you should speak about concerning the prewar period.
You probably do not even realize that you are still doing the same thing today and shaping public opinion in the same way.