Irresponsible government's irresponsible economic plan

The government on April 6 finalized an emergency economic package, which includes bank loan write-offs and setting up a stock-buying body to help banks and large corporations. Akahata's editorial of April 7 dismissed the package as an irresponsible policy left by an irresponsible government. Excerpts of the editorial are as follows.

Prime Minister Mori has belatedly formally announced his resignation as the Japanese people are raging against the irresponsibility and inability of the government which is responsible for the nation's economic crisis and the worsening of the people's livelihood with no ability to show a way out.

The coalition government's economic package contains measures which will not only be useless for economic recovery but make the recession far worse.

The package will allow major banks to write off their bad loans to general contract construction companies. In return, construction companies will carry out large scale corporate restructuring. The bank's action will also drive small- and medium-sized enterprises into bankruptcy.

It is outrageous that the ruling parties regard the "increase in bankruptcies and unemployment" as a "matter of course" (Kitagawa Kazuo, Komei Party policy commission chair).

The package also proposes setting up a stock-buying body. The body will buy shares held by banks which are detrimental to improving the bank's profitability. If the share price falls and produce losses, they will be made up for by tax money.

This is a blatant insult to stock market discipline. The LDP-Komei coalition government isn't qualified to speak for the market economy.

How absurd it is to just polish the mirror (stock prices) which reflects the investors' economic prospects without trying to improve the real economy.

In the one-on-one debate with Japanese Communist Party Chair Shii Kazuo in the Diet, Prime Minister Mori acknowledged that corporate profits increased, but that "they failed to benefit the household economy."

Japan's economic recovery is impossible unless the household economy, which accounts for 60 percent of the nation's economy, recovers.

The LDP-Komei coalition government, staying on the failed course, lacks any qualification or capacity to steer the nation's economy.

The emergency economic proposal which the JCP published, including a consumption tax rate cut to 3 percent, is the way to get out of the economic panic toward recovery. (end)