Time for Japan's economy to end being hinged on U.S. -- Akahata editorial, July 23 (excerpts)

WorldCom Inc., a U.S. telecommunication giant, filed for bankruptcy, the largest ever in assets, triggered by the surfacing of window dressing to conceal profit-padding of 440 billion yen (3.8 billion dollars).

The developments show clearly that U.S.-style capitalism on which the Koizumi "structural reform" is modeled has been ruled by the power of bottomless greed.

WorldCom used its increasing stock prices as a lever for making over 70 M&As to be ranked second in the U.S. telecommunication industry. It used to be the symbol of the myth of a growing U.S. economy called the "new economy."

Scandals involving the U.S. administration have surfaced, which are not limited to individual businesses.

U.S. President George W. Bush is under suspicion of committing insider trading in which he bought stocks, funded by the company, of an energy company at which he was a director, and sold them based on insider information.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has a lawsuit against him by representatives of stockholders of an oil company for allegedly rigging the stock price by padding sales while he was CEO of the company.

It stands to reason that government officials and the media of European countries have begun to say that they should not model their economies after the U.S. economy, which is based exclusively on market forces.

In sharp contrast, the Japanese government lacks any sense of crisis. Economic and Fiscal Minister Takenaka Heizo gave an optimistic comment that the U.S. real economy is very strong.

The Koizumi Cabinet regards the U.S. market system allowing stock prices to be rigged to ensure profits as an ideal, and wants to introduce it in the name of "structural reform." It is a plan to make up for the economic downturn caused by the "reform" with increased exports to the United States. The very basis of this policy is now under question.

Past governments intentionally set Japan's interest rates lower than those of the United States to create a mechanism in which funds flow from Japan to the United States for its higher interest rates. This mechanism helped to boost U.S. stock prices and at the same time helped to make up for the huge U.S. trade deficit.

In Japan, this interest policy robbed its people of interest income and incurred enormous losses on the economy as a consequence of falling dollar prices.

Time to rethink

Write-offs of bad loans held by major banks, which the Koizumi Cabinet is carrying out at the expense of increased business failures and unemployment, is another example of subordination to the United States. The U.S. Bush administration has imposed this policy on Japan because U.S. major corporations are waiting to make easy gain through the purchase of failing Japanese companies.

Now is time for Japan to fundamentally review its present economic policy that depends on the United States. The Koizumi Cabinet and Liberal Democratic Party politics sticks to their dependence on the United States in the face of the alarm bells, and is not qualified to administer the economy. (end)