Hard Time for Olympus?

8th of November

Olympus Japanese companies are right into a financial scandal. The scandal is about the 687$ million payment that was not relevant to the company operation while the official version from the Chairman Kikukawa mentions those spending as losses. The chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa resigned after all those accusations. He was not able to redress the situation so the easiest way for him to get away with that much money spend with no relevant reason was literally to get away. This is the biggest financial fraud in the Japan history and this might help the government in a certain way: it will redirect the journalist and popular judgment toward that issue instead of being locked on every government moves to get out of the financial and nuclear crisis.
Update on the 14th: Olympus supporter think that one of the best thing they could do is to rehire the Briton that worked 30 years for that company and has been chairmen. The Briton, Michael Woodford is the most competent CEO that has worked for the company and he might be the only one able to restructure the company to get out of the 80% loss in stock value since October 14th.

Social security or not?

As it was said in the previous posts, the Japanese government has decided to take a lot of drastic measures to stop the on-going nuclear crisis. One of these measures was to increase income taxes. But one of the latest measure that the government has decided to take is to decrease social security among women. The government wants to revise the designation for homemakers that allows them a pension share if their husbands are enrolled in the program through their employers. The reason why the government wants to remove this pension is that they are saying that all Japanese pay for this program but it is not all of them that benefit from this program. The government said that this program benefits 10 million full-time housewives over 33 million other women, married or single, who work either part-time or full-time and have to make pension payments themselves. I don't agree with the government because they completely want to remove the social security for women and I don't think that this is fair. Instead of removing completely this social security, they should add some. Every single women should have the same level of social security.

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fd20111023pb.html

Is raising the retirement age a good idea for Japan?

This Friday, on October 14th, some japanese journalist revealed to the japanese citizens that the present government had in mind to increase the retirement age from 65 to 70 years old in the next years. The purpose of this measure is to decrease the Japanese debt, which is already of 10 trillions of dollars. This is another measure that could make the government fall. Since that the government was elected, they have almost only put negative measures in place for the citizens. The only thing that the government wants to do for the moment is to find a way out from this crisis. But to do it, the only way that the present government seems to want to end this crisis is to punish the citizens by putting measures such as increasing the taxes and increasing the retirement age. But what is happening to Japan is not the fault of the citizens. It is the nature that caused this catastrophe. It is also not the fault of the citizens that the debt is as high as it is right now. So, instead of punishing the citizens, they should try to find measures that would affect the citizens less directly such as increasing the immigration into Japan. Again, a government is supposed to promote democracy which is essentially the people. Right now, the government only cares about the japanese reputation around the world and really don't care about their citizens. Is the government going to fall in the next months? Who knows?!!

http://www.japantoday.com/category/politics/view/govt-likely-to-face-strong-opposition-to-raising-retirement-age-survey

Outrageous !!!!!!

Hello everyone

As it was said in the previous posts, Japan is facing a huge nuclear crisis. 

This crisis is affecting the world economy but also the Japanese people. The previous government has fallen and a new government was elected at the head of the state. Only one month after the election of Mr. Noda, the newly elected prime minister, his party has lost 8 points. But there are reasons for this lost of 8 points. A government is supposed to promote democracy. It is supposed to represent the people. In his case, he is doing the opposite. First, he wants to increase the taxes on products when he knows that many of the Japanese workers have lost their job and that many of them could not even afford this tax increase. Companies such as Toyota have had to stop their production of vehicles because of this crisis. Instead of helping the Japanese, they are promoting foreign policies with the US and this is because they care too much about their reputation. They only want to look like the perfect government that care about their citizens but the only thing that they care about is their reputation and this frustrates me!!! Secondly, the government is not saying the truth about the nuclear crisis to the world. This is unacceptable!! As it was said in the previous video, the level of nuclear radiations can now be compared with the level of nuclear radiations that was released in the atmosphere in the Tchernobyl accidents. When the accidents happened, they said that the level was not comparable. This is on the international level. But nationally, it is even worst. They are telling to the Japanese that this crisis is going to end soon and that they will be able to return to their homes. But this not true!!! It is going to take up to 100 years to clean up all of the nuclear waste!!! A 100 years, have you heard that!! This is almost three generations. They are putting the lives of the people around there in danger. Nuclear waste is one of the most dangerous waste that has ever existed. It attacks and destroys the cells in your body. You can go and see this document if you are interested. If the food is surrounded by a large amount of nuclear waste, it could be deadly. You can go and see this document if you are interested. http://www.cea.fr/var/cea/storage/static/gb/library/Clefs53/pdf-gb/009-11pflury_53gb.pdf

1-http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/15/japan-nuclear-crisis-stocks-tumble

New government already falling???

Is the new government already falling? Maybe not but he sure has lost some points over the other parties. When he was elected on August 30th, he had 62,8 points. Only one month after his election, a survey done by the national poll announced that he had already lost 8 points which is enormous. In the Cabinet, his disaproval rating went from 10 to 27,8 percent. This is is mostly due to his tax increases that he wants to put in place in next years but also due to the situation of the Japanese people with the nuclear crisis going on.

1-http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/article2506306.ece 

Telling the truth!!!

On september 29th, Japan announced to the press that they were scared to tell the truth. The truth about what? About telling to the citizens that they were living close to Fukishima that they won't be able to return to their homes.  Here is a very good video that explains why they are afraid to tell the truth.

1-http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-09-28/fukushima-residents-unable-to-return-home/3026496/?site=sydney

Foreign policies: Japan’s solution to the crisis

As it was said in my previous article, Japan is facing a huge crisis. A consequence from this crisis was that the last Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, was ejected from the Cabinet. He was replaced by Yoshihiko Noda, a fiscal hawk[1]. If he wants to stay at the head of the Government, Noda will have to take some very good initiatives for the Japanese because he is not the most well-liked from the parliament.  One thing that he wants to do is to raise the tax consumption and this is not a very good idea if he wants to stay at the head of the government[2]. But his favourable foreign policies are the solution for him to stay on top. Roughly two weeks after his election, on September 16^th , he had already started to reinforce the foreign policies of Japan with other countries. He is trying to earn back the trust of the Obama’s government from the United States. To do so, he backed away from the idea of an East Asian community. He also picked two pro-Washington officials for key policy positions, naming Johns Hopkins-educated Akihisa Nagashima as a defense adviser and China hawk Seiji Maehara as a policy adviser. Those actions were all favorable for the US. Also, his policies that he wants to do include support for a multi-nation free-trade agreement and for allowing easier exports of Japanese weapons technology, ventures that have strong support in Washington. Noda has also signaled his intention to carry out a long-stalled agreement with Washington that would put the U.S. Marine presence in Okinawa on a more solid footing[3].

    

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[1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/yoshihiko-noda-japans-newest-leader-says-he-has-just-the-style-to-handle-a-mess/2011/08/29/gIQAXIZymJ_story.html

[2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/yoshihiko-noda-japans-newest-leader-says-he-has-just-the-style-to-handle-a-mess/2011/08/29/gIQAXIZymJ_story.html

[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-trying-to-repair-ties-with-washington/2011/09/15/gIQA6afHXK_story.html