tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post2224740645436429008..comments2023-10-09T00:45:55.603+09:00Comments on Shisaku: A Katz-Fink Dialogue on Japan's national debt and the management of national assetsMTChttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04626942240117432624noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post-34531451520687356992010-07-20T01:50:24.042+09:002010-07-20T01:50:24.042+09:00Of course there are many additional details, such ...Of course there are many additional details, such as maturity and how the Postal Savings System enters the netting out calculations. For more, see the ongoing discussions on the NBR <a href="http://www.nbr.org/research/activity.aspx?id=53" rel="nofollow">Japan Forum</a>.Mike Smitkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10310816368811158899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post-47186151616270629402010-07-16T18:37:42.420+09:002010-07-16T18:37:42.420+09:00This was a wonderful dialogue, and I wish there we...This was a wonderful dialogue, and I wish there were more discussion of why the 200% gross debt figure is a bit of a red herring.<br /><br />From accounting and corporate practices that I have seen in Japan, for some reason it seems very important for power people to have this tight "money control" over others, and to make accounting as opaque as possible.<br /><br />You might think I just described Wall Street in America, and I suppose there are some similarities.<br /><br />I think a lot of the Edo-era games, both of hiding wealth and Tokyo seeking to control everything in the hinterlands, is present in the current government financial structure, too.<br /><br />"Strategic assets" is just a nice way of saying a centralized and government-controlled enterprise. The regional daimyo don't have to leave their families in Edo every other year. Just, their prefecture will be eternally reliant on industry controlled from Tokyo.<br /><br /><br />And as for debt held in other form (B of J notes), holding 100 man yen notes as paper is a lot more popular here than in America, and if you read the headlines it might have to do with the fact that they are easy to bury in the backyard. No wonder the consumption tax gets people upset. Evade the income tax and the consumption tax nabs you anyway.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post-83502414861546405862010-07-15T14:05:10.223+09:002010-07-15T14:05:10.223+09:00The interview touches slightly on an important con...The interview touches slightly on an important consideration: ownership of "strategic assets". An extreme example would be a nations military forces, which very, very few people would want to have privatized no matter how much more efficient its operation may become. It's function is too critical to the nation (and dysfunction too dangerous) to leave direct government control, to say nothing of foreign ownership.<br /><br />But many other assets are strategically important, if not to the same degree as an army. You can plausibly argue that post and telecommunications, highways and railways, harbours and airports all are important enough to keep at least partly under government control and away from foreign ownership*. <br /><br />That will mean at minimum that private ownership and management of such assets would be tightly circumscribed, and that the market for those assets will be relatively illiquid. But would that not also mean that the profits from sale, and the improvements in efficiency from privatizing such assets would be substantially lower than a simple comparison with unencumbered assets would make you believe?<br /><br />Now, some government assets are clearly not in this class. If JT is privatized (and then, hopefully, its main product gradually made illegal or taxed to extinction over the next decade or two) then no skin off anybody's back. But governments tend to hold assets precisely because they are (or were) strategically important, so I suspect that the ease of disposing of them is overstated, as is the eventual benefits accrued from doing so.<br /><br />--<br />* Many countries, including the USA, has tight ownership and operating restrictions on all such assets.Jan Morenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06834641501438709866noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post-30778624483796800642010-07-15T13:39:32.942+09:002010-07-15T13:39:32.942+09:00http://www.chokugen.com/e/archives/20091105.htmlhttp://www.chokugen.com/e/archives/20091105.htmlhoihoi51https://www.blogger.com/profile/02682604811633713483noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6714063.post-22024570750457058932010-07-15T13:15:33.684+09:002010-07-15T13:15:33.684+09:00Wow!
Thank you to all!Wow! <br />Thank you to all!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com