Some items of interest:
- According to the Nikkei Shimbun, BOJ expansion of its balance sheet have made the market for national debt so barren the Ministry of Finance has offered its first short-term debt with a negative interest rate (Link - J). The appropriate comment at this point is, "Yikes!"
- Tobias Harris does a turn on television offering a sober view of the current turmoil in the Diet(Link - J). His view that Abe Shinzo faces a very different political environment in 2014 than he did in 2007. Abe is the quite happy accidental beneficiary of the collapse of a 30-year national program to oust the Liberal Democratic Party. Tossing the LDP bums out, and installing a Democratic Party of Japan-led government in 2009 did not deliver the paradise of responsive and responsible government the Japanese public had hoped for, however. Now the LDP is rivaled in public opinion polls only by the "I don't support anybody/I don't care/I don't like making decisions so please leave me alone" party -- meaning that even if the Second Abe Cabinet enters the traditional death slide of a year of steadily declining cabinet support ratings to 20%, followed by Abe's announcement of his resignation, the only person who can replace Abe will be a member of the LDP (the current likeliest candidates being Ishiba Shigeru, Ishiba Shigeru and possibly Ishiba Shigeru).
- Dr. Adam Posen delivers a very upbeat assessment of Abenomics starting at the 39:50 mark of this PIIE video of its Global Economic Prospects session of 2 October 2014 (Link - video)For the record, 710,000 more women were in the labor force as of August 2014 (the most recent month for which the government has data) than were in the labor force in January 2013, Abe's first full month in office. During that span 230,300 men also entered the labor force -- though that number only returns the number of men in the labor force to the point where it was in February 2013.
- Professor Eugene Gholz, whom I met in Tokyo earlier this year, has produced an easy-to-read paper for the Council on Foreign Relations explaining why Japanese policy makers should continue to remain alert to but should stop making paranoid noises about global rare earth/rare metals supplies. (Link)
- Kasai Yoshiyuki, a Shisaku favorite and the purported maestro of the Second Coming of Abe Shinzo last week saw his grand boondoggle receive the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (Link). Yesterday, he made his pitch to extend his levitating empire overseas (Link) -- not surprising since the CEO of JR Central has admitted that the Tokyo-Nagoya maglev line will never turn a profit. (Link
Later - Jonathan Soble, formerly the Tokyo bureau chief of the Financial Times, starts out with a bang in his new posting as business reporter for The New York Times with the long list of former American politicians Mr. Kasai has acquired for the new North American Wing of his collection. An absolutely precious photo accompanies the story. (Link)
Hope all you shareholders of JR Central are happy with the way the chairman emeritus Kasai is spending your money.
Showing posts with label maglev. Show all posts
Showing posts with label maglev. Show all posts
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Are We Of His World Or Merely On It?
This is my world
and I am
World Leader Pretend.
- REM, "World Leader Pretend" (1988)
What does Kasai Yoshiyuki want?
- A leveraged buyout of the management of his homeland, installing a chief executive with significant self-worth issues? Check.
- A fantasy vanity maglev project through the heart of his country, with hostage shareholders and ultimately the taxpayers footing the bill? Check.
- The militarization of Japan's space policy? Check.
- U.S. high speed rail policy muddled by sales of advanced railway technology? Check.
- Japan-U.K. strategic relations muddled by sales of advanced railway technology? A work in progress.
- The United States, Japan and India forged into a politico-economic strategic iron triangle? A work in progress.
- A more strongly pro-government and pro-nuclear NHK? Check.
- The use of influence over the prime minister and the cash generated by the Shinkansen in a zero sum game of influence intent on countering China in every corner of the globe, no matter how remote? Check.
The above is just what's available after only a few minutes diddling around in English.
It is probably best to familiarize yourself with Kasai Yoshiyuki's world*. Because if your life is in some way linked to Japan, you already live in it.
--------------------
* Go ahead, Google him. In various combinations: "Yoshiyuki Kasai Shinzo Abe" "Yoshiyuki Kasai China" "Yoshiyuki Kasai India" "Yoshiyuki Kasai space" "Yoshiyuki Kasai
Friday, October 25, 2013
About That Crazy Linear Motor Car Fare Number
You may recall last month the splashy public announcement from the Central Japan Railway Company (JR Central, a.k.a. JR Tokai) on the start of construction of a maglev hyperexpress rail line running through central Japan between Tokyo and Nagoya, to be completed in 2027.
The superlatives were daunting:
- a top running speed of over 500 kilometers per hour,
- a start-to-terminus run time of 40 minutes
- a construction cost of 5.5 trillion yen borne solely by JR Central (9 trillion with a proposed extension to Osaka, scheduled for 2045)
- four passes above 500 meters including summit under the Japan Alps of 1200 meters (for a Tokyo comparative, that is a climb to the top of Sky Tree followed by a climb up Takao-san)
- 86% of the trip through tunnels (meaning a ride similar to one on the full length of Tokyo's Marunouchi subway line, which is 90% underground)
- power consumption 3 times higher per passenger than the fastest Shinkansen (not a reassuring number in the post-Fukushima Daichi electrical power provision environment)
Then came the kicker: how much a ticket on the wonder train would cost.
According to the plan announced on September 18, the projected cost of a one-way fare from Tokyo to Nagoya on the linear hyperexpress would be 11,480 yen, only 700 yen (7%) more than the cost for the same one-way trip on the fastest Nozomi Shinkansen train.
The response to this final claim was...astonishment. (Link - J)
Looking at the fare, the number of passengers in each train and the number of departures per hour, the Mainichi Shimbun foresaw the obvious danger -- that the project is designed to fail in its finances, the company's managers being confident they can extort a bailout from the government. (Link)
Yesterday, in a press conference revealing more details regarding what will be in essence the world's most ridiculously speedy subway, JR Central president Yamada Yoshiomi explained the reason JR Central has projected a maglev ride fare with an unbelievably low markup of only 7% over the cost of a Shinkansen trip taking twice as long. You would think Yamada would have provided some kind of breakdown of the pricing, showing how JR Central pays off the cost of the investment and the costs of operating the line while charging so little over the currently available high speed train trip.
Uh, well...he seemingly did not.
The reason the newspapers are reporting Yamada gave for the incredibly small additional cost for a maglev ticket?
You read that right: if Yamada is to be believed, the parameters for the price of a ticket are set by not by the engineers and accountants, but by JR Central's marketing department -- what the marketers feel customers might think the improvement in service is worth.
One could laugh, except for anyone following the moves of JR Central's chairman Kasai Yoshiyuki, including his role as the bundler for Abe Shinzo's return to power (Link and Link), his hiring of former high-ranking U.S. officials as his salemen (Link) as a part of general dabbling in foreign policy agenda setting (Link) and his reported attempts to press national broadcaster NHK into adopting a more pro-nuclear editorial line (Link) would think twice about laughing anything involving JR Central plans.
There is one determined hombre behind the company advertising that nutty price.
The superlatives were daunting:
- a top running speed of over 500 kilometers per hour,
- a start-to-terminus run time of 40 minutes
- a construction cost of 5.5 trillion yen borne solely by JR Central (9 trillion with a proposed extension to Osaka, scheduled for 2045)
- four passes above 500 meters including summit under the Japan Alps of 1200 meters (for a Tokyo comparative, that is a climb to the top of Sky Tree followed by a climb up Takao-san)
- 86% of the trip through tunnels (meaning a ride similar to one on the full length of Tokyo's Marunouchi subway line, which is 90% underground)
- power consumption 3 times higher per passenger than the fastest Shinkansen (not a reassuring number in the post-Fukushima Daichi electrical power provision environment)
Then came the kicker: how much a ticket on the wonder train would cost.
According to the plan announced on September 18, the projected cost of a one-way fare from Tokyo to Nagoya on the linear hyperexpress would be 11,480 yen, only 700 yen (7%) more than the cost for the same one-way trip on the fastest Nozomi Shinkansen train.
The response to this final claim was...astonishment. (Link - J)
Looking at the fare, the number of passengers in each train and the number of departures per hour, the Mainichi Shimbun foresaw the obvious danger -- that the project is designed to fail in its finances, the company's managers being confident they can extort a bailout from the government. (Link)
Yesterday, in a press conference revealing more details regarding what will be in essence the world's most ridiculously speedy subway, JR Central president Yamada Yoshiomi explained the reason JR Central has projected a maglev ride fare with an unbelievably low markup of only 7% over the cost of a Shinkansen trip taking twice as long. You would think Yamada would have provided some kind of breakdown of the pricing, showing how JR Central pays off the cost of the investment and the costs of operating the line while charging so little over the currently available high speed train trip.
Uh, well...he seemingly did not.
The reason the newspapers are reporting Yamada gave for the incredibly small additional cost for a maglev ticket?
"We can only receive about that much more [over the Shinkansen ticket price] from the customers."Clunk. No wait, double-clunk.
(Link - J)
You read that right: if Yamada is to be believed, the parameters for the price of a ticket are set by not by the engineers and accountants, but by JR Central's marketing department -- what the marketers feel customers might think the improvement in service is worth.
One could laugh, except for anyone following the moves of JR Central's chairman Kasai Yoshiyuki, including his role as the bundler for Abe Shinzo's return to power (Link and Link), his hiring of former high-ranking U.S. officials as his salemen (Link) as a part of general dabbling in foreign policy agenda setting (Link) and his reported attempts to press national broadcaster NHK into adopting a more pro-nuclear editorial line (Link) would think twice about laughing anything involving JR Central plans.
There is one determined hombre behind the company advertising that nutty price.
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