Saturday, December 20, 2008

Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan or Reflections on Commercial Life

Financial Policy and Central Banking in Japan

Author: Thomas F Cargill

Japan's financial institutions and policy underwent remarkable change in the past decade. The country began the 1990s with a heavily regulated financial system managed by an unchallenged Ministry of Finance and ended the decade with a Big Bang financial market reform, a complete restructuring of its regulatory financial institutions, and an independent central bank. These reforms have taken place amid recession and rising unemployment, collapsing asset prices, a looming banking crisis, and the lowest interest rates in the industrial world.

This book analyzes how the bank-dominated financial system--a key element of the oft-heralded "Japanese economic model"--broke down in the 1990s and spawned sweeping reforms. It documents the sources of the Japanese economic stagnation of the 1990s, the causes of the financial crisis, the slow and initially limited policy response to banking problems, and the reform program that followed. It also evaluates the new financial structure and reforms at the Bank of Japan in light of the challenges facing the Japanese economy. These challenges range from conducting monetary policy in a zero-interest rate environment characterized by a "liquidity trap" to managing consolidation in the Japanese banking sector against the backdrop of increasing international competition.



Look this: Almost Homemade or Mediterranean Summer

Reflections on Commercial Life: An Anthology of Classic Texts from Plato to the Present

Author: Patrick Murray

Is commercialization the mainspring of modernity? Do modern commercial forms represent an end state of social developmentthe "end of history"? Reflections on Commercial Life, an anthology of writings from the ancient Greeks to contemporary thinkers, poses these and other similar questions. It provides students, scholars, and general readers an opportunity to develop a more self- conscious and critical relationship to commercial life, as it challenges the inattention of mainstream economics to the social forms that make up commercial life, such as money,the commodity, wage-labor, and capital.

Selections are drawn from seminal works of high intellectual and literary quality. Through an inquiry into history, nature, and outcomes, Reflections on Commercial Life is an important anthology that offers the opportunity to explore, as never before, alternatives to modern commercial life.



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Why Don't You Hedge Your Economic Future?


The Economy? They Paint It Black.
Let's Paint it Green, Will You?


What Are They Offering Except to Wait, Suffer and Be Patient Till, On the Long Run, The Crisis is Over?

A milder avatar of the present crisis started in Japan in 1993. Its consequence was called "Japan Lost Decade". It is 15 years old now.

Believe us they tried everything available: Keyneian Fiscal Policy, Zero Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP), Quantitative Easing, ... You Name It!


Can You Wait That Long?



"The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead.

Economists set themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can only tell us that when the storm is past the ocean is flat again."

Sir John Maynard 'Invisible Hand' Keynes


A Tract on Monetary Reform (1923) Ch. 3

We Can't Afford to Wait That Long. Or Can You?

"The decadent international but individualistic capitalism, in the hands of which we found ourselves after the war, is not a success. It is not intelligent, it is not beautiful, it is not just, it is not virtuous—and it doesn’t deliver the goods.

In short we dislike it and are beginning to despise it. But when we wonder what to put in its place, we are perplexed.”

John Maynard 'Invisble Hand' Keynes


1776 - Annuit Cœptis Offers Its Solution,

Dynamic on the Short Run & Stable on the Long Run:

A Credit Free, Free Market Economy

1776-Annuit Cœptis Not Only Offers a New Idea,

It Propose Its Practical Implementation,

Its Exit Strategy.



"The composition of this book has been for the author a long struggle of escape, and so must the reading of it be for most readers if the author's assault upon them is to be successful, a struggle of escape from habitual modes of thought and expression.

The ideas which are here expressed so laboriously are extremely simple and should be obvious.

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds."

Sir John Maynard 'Invisible Hand' Keynes
The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money,
Decembre 13, 1935 Preface



"At the present moment people are unusually expectant of a more fundamental diagnosis; more particularly ready to receive it; eager to try it out, if it should be even plausible.

But apart from this contemporary mood, the ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood.

Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.

Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back. Emperors and armies come and go; but unless they leave new ideas in their wake, they are of passing historic consequence.

I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval;

for in the field of economic and political philosophy there are not many who are influenced by new theories after they are twenty-five or thirty years of age, so that the ideas which civil servants and politicians and even agitators apply to current events are not likely to be the newest.

But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil."

John Maynard 'Invisble Hand' Keynes,
The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money,
13 December 1935, p. 383.

Quoted by Master Conductor Sir Alan 'El Maestro' Greenspan.
Adam 'Defunct Economist' Smith
At the Adam Smith Memorial Lecture, Kirkcaldy, Scotland
February 6, 2005


On Friday 19th, December 2008, 1776 - Annuit Cœptis has nominated its Master Conductor Sir Alan 'El Maestro' Greenspan.

In the Age of Turbulence We Want an Adventure in a New World Economic Order.


To be sure he will launch our economy as soon as he thinks it is feasible.

✔ Protect Your Economic Interests.

✔ The Numbered Account: A Ticket to Ride.

✔ The Credit Free Currency.

✔ Assets Transfer: The Exit Strategy no one Can Afford to Refuse, or Can You?

✔ A Specific Application of Employment, Interest and Money:
Why We Got Here and Why Our Exit Strategy is Credible.


In order to keep the public informed about the development of its actions, of the "catastrophic event" and avert the suicidal behaviours that are known to take place during periods of Great Economic Depression 1776 - Annuit Cœptis sponsors a Discussion - Support Group


Consider your economic environment, print and give a wide audience to this document.