August 22, 2010.
In 1992, former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa proposed “the disposal of non-performing loans through the injection of public funds.” It was the foresight of a genuine elite.
But it was crushed by opposition from government ministries, the media, and financial institutions, and Japan suffered losses of ¥900 trillion over twenty years.
Nevertheless, the media continues to attach the label of “politics and money” to the politicians they wish to destroy.
“Politics and money” is nothing other than the destruction of capable politicians with decisiveness, carried out through a foolish sense of justice that obstructs the prosperity of the nation.
From the perspective of August 22, 2010, this article examines the true root of the problem of “politics and money.”
The author argues that the proposal by Kiichi Miyazawa in 1992 to inject public funds in order to dispose of non-performing loans was crushed by opposition from the media, government ministries, and others, and that this brought about the prolonged stagnation of the Japanese economy that followed.
It is precisely this conduct by the media that constitutes the essential problem of “politics and money,” and the author severely criticizes its attitude of setting aside its own responsibility while condemning particular politicians.
On “Politics and Money.”
August 22, 2010
Kiichi Miyazawa, a true elite produced by Japan, the Prime Minister at the time, and also Japan’s foremost authority on economics, realized in August 1992 what he had noticed and what we had also noticed…
Moreover, there was also an example in the United States… Before the phenomenon that the media named the bubble occurred in Japan, something similar had happened in the United States as well… The United States injected the necessary public funds and resolved the problem in a short period of time…
Amid the financial instability following the collapse of the bubble economy, he spoke in favor of public assistance for financial institutions at the Liberal Democratic Party’s Karuizawa seminar in August 1992.
He stated that, because the substantial decline in asset prices such as land and share prices was qualitatively different from previous economic downturns, it was necessary to dispose of non-performing loans at an early stage, even if that required the injection of public funds.
However, he encountered strong opposition from government ministries, the media, business organizations, and even the financial institutions themselves, and the proposal was never implemented.
At that time, the strongest opposition came from the Asahi Shimbun and from Atsushi Yamada, who was no more than a single reporter in its economic news department.
As a result, Kiichi Miyazawa was forced to withdraw that decision, and because of this, the disposal of non-performing loans through the injection of public funds into banks became taboo. For many years thereafter, not a single Japanese politician was able to speak of it.…
See my essay, “Until Twenty Years Ago, There Were Genuine Elites in the World of Politics.”
For example, led by economic reporters at the Asahi Shimbun, who were no more than second-rate when it came to economics, you suppressed, with a grand chorus of foolish righteous indignation, the solution that had inevitably arisen in the mind of a genuine elite, and over these twenty years you inflicted losses of some ¥900 trillion, give or take, upon the nation.…
There must also have been people within the Democratic Party who joined that chorus…
That, precisely, is the problem of “politics and money.”
And then, with what face can you attach a label to powerful and capable politicians as though “politics and money” were to follow them forever, and with what mouth can you claim that this represents public opinion?
Is this not worse than kindergarten children?