The World's Consumer Of Last Resort.

• Author: SMICK, DAVID M.
• Position: Brief Article

One of the great hoped for market scenarios for the late summer of 2001 has been the big take-off in the Japanese stock market. The theory goes that new Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi is so wildly popular that his radical reform package will sweep through the Diet later this year once the upper house elections have been completed. The thinking is that a fearful LDP will have no choice but to follow the prime minister's lead.

Maybe so. But one has to wonder because Koizumi's archrival within the LDP--the Hashimoto faction, led by former Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto--is in complete control of the upper house. Today the Hashimoto acolytes smile politely at the prime minister's reform suggestions, but once the actual agenda is offered, they clearly will be in a position to weaken if not destroy, if simply by inaction, the Koizumi agenda. Don't forget, too, that Koizumi has very little staff to help push through major legislative initiatives.

With reform still an uncertainty, that then leaves the yen as Tokyo's last remaining tool for recovery of an economy experiencing persistent deflationary tendencies. Travel around Tokyo policy circles these days, and it seems that everyone, with the exception of the Ministry of Finance, believes the yen desperately needs to weaken if Japan is to claw its way out of the current morass. Even the Bank of Japan is said to prefer a weaker yen.

So why has the yen remained stable (and in recent months, even strengthened a bit against the dollar)? The obvious argument offered is that the Ministry of Finance fears the effect of yen weakness on the banking sector, which is chock full of long-term Japanese government debt. It is also suggested that U.S. financial authorities may be less enamored of yen weakness, unless and until Tokyo deals with its bank balance sheet problem.

But a less obvious, and more interesting, explanation says that Japanese policymakers are reluctant to let the yen go for fear of how the Chinese will react. The Chinese, no doubt also doing the bidding for their Asian neighbors, are said to exert enormous behind-the-scenes pressure on Tokyo anytime it looks as if the yen is about to move against the dollar in either direction. Indeed, U.S. officials may not fully appreciate the increased strength of China's influence in Tokyo policymaking. New Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, for instance, is said to side so much with the Chinese in internal discussions, she gives the impression to...