Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2012 October 10 - 16 [ECONOMY]

Economy in subordination to US - II: Pressure for postal service privatization

Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro’s cabinet inaugurated in April 2001 put all its efforts into a write-off of bad loans from banks’ books in its “structural reform” scheme in response to the U.S. government’s strong demand.

Soon after the inauguration, Japan’s Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry and the U.S. State Department co-hosted the Investment-in-Japan Symposium in Tokyo in June 2001, which was participated in by government officials and business leaders of the two countries.

Giving a keynote speech at the symposium, C. Michael Armstrong, then chairman and CEO of the U.S. major telecommunications company AT&T, urged Japan to accelerate the disposal of non-performing loans and promote corporate restructuring. Mitsubishi Corporation President Makihara Minoru responded to Armstrong by saying, “Though it may lead to a rise in unemployment, the structural reform is inevitably necessary.”

The U.S. side pushed Japan to swiftly dispose bad loans for the sake of U.S. capital which wanted to buy and sell them in the form of real estate and business ventures. Meanwhile, many small- and medium-sized companies in Japan went bankrupt under the promotion of the writing-off of bad loans despite their desperate efforts to keep their businesses running.

The other major component of the Koizumi “structural reform” scheme was to have the private sector take over and operate public services under its “from-public-to-private” campaign, mainly focusing on the privatization of postal services.

The U.S. called on Japan to privatize its postal services from an even earlier stage. Published in November 1995, the annual Submission by the Government of U.S. to the Government of Japan demanded that the Japanese government ban a government agency from offering insurance services that can be direct competitors with private insurance firms. The annual Submission issued in October 1999 strongly called for the reduction and abolition of Japan’s postal life insurance system.

The U.S. side strengthened its pressure on Japan in 2004 when the Koizumi Cabinet embarked on the privatization of postal services. In November of that year, the U.S.-Japan Business Council held a meeting in Tokyo and called for the postal savings and insurance services to be abolished.

In 2005, Japanese Communist Party Upper House member Daimon Mikishi revealed in the Diet that since April 2004 the Japanese government’s group working for postal service privatization and U.S. government and business representatives held 18 meetings, 5 of which were joined by members of the American Council of Life Insurers.

It has been 5 years since the postal services were privatized. The U.S. side is still interfering in Japan’s domestic affairs by urging it to further promote privatization in the interests of major U.S. banks and insurance companies.

>Economy in subordination to US - I: Interfering in Japan’s affairs
>Economy in subordination to US - III: Destruction of local economies
>Economy in subordination to US - IV: TPP, US final demand