The Postal saving in Japan and MPT and free trade

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Fri, 2 Jun 1995 12:49:04 +0900
To: farber () central cis upenn edu (Dave Farber)
From: sja () glocom ac jp (Stephen J. Anderson)
X-Sender: sja () izanagi glocom ac jp
Subject: Re: Is it true


At  6:57 PM 95.6.1 +0900, Dave Farber wrote:
> Is it true that MPT sits on a Trillion Dollar Postal Savings which pays
> artificially
> high interest and is poorly invested


Basically, yes.


The biggest bank in the world is run by the Posts bureaucrats and handed
over to the Ministry of Finance for much of its investing.


The Fiscal Investment and Loan Program is 50% the size of the regular
National Accounts (what most people call the government's budget.  This
quirk gives bureaucrats leverage (all puns intended) to reward their
friends, and sometimes punish their enemies.


Right now, they are using it for ODA, too.  They have a lot of loans to
extend for Malaysia and Indonesia and China in the face of yen
appreciation.  Japan will not forgive any of the earlier loans that now
cost so much in revalued yen, but oh yes, so sorry, they will extend new
loans for a longer time to these "aid recipients."  Sign on the dotted line
please.


Where's the capital come from?  Part postal savings, part pension programs.
 None of this legal limits to buying Treasury Bonds like the Social
Security Administration faces in the States--no way!


And Japan is just like the US--right......


You can post this to your interesting people list, too.  I think the recent
"Great Debate" seen in the Newsweek articles, and the scurrilous stupidity
of free traders when ignoring the easy time that Japanese industry and
bureaucracy has had with the Cold War system, is appalling.


I think that Bill Clinton should call the bluff of the Japanese, slap
sanctions on them, and see who really suffers when the WTO collapses.  I am
beyond the name-calling of those that say this is isolationist or anti-free
trade--the worst offenders in this country are the MITI propagandists and
the Toyota officials who won't fire auto parts suppliers because they can't
compete with US producers or refuse to by not giving out information about
their parts.


And all that, just because you asked me about the secrets of the finance
bureaucrats......


Steve Anderson