Fisher Capital Management - Japan Elects a New Premier Part 1

Fisher Capital Management Eight and a half months after riding the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) historic lower house victory into office, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama announced his resignation, having haphazardly frittered away a chest brimming with political capital.

Major newspapers said that Hatoyama was resigning mainly for two reasons: his failure to keep his promise to relocate the functions of US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, Okinawa, out of Okinawa Prefecture, and a political funding scandal that included his mother’s provision of some ¥1.26 billion to him over years.

Following Hatoyama’s resignation, Minister of Finance Naoto Kan was elected as the new Prime Minister, the fifth in four years. At his inaugural press conference Kan proposed a comprehensive reconstruction of the economy, public finance, and social security as his priority, in addition to reforming public administration, and conducting responsible diplomatic and defence policy.

Fisher Capital Management Report- Japan Elects a New Premier Part 1: The biggest question surrounding the once-popular new government is whether Kan can really turn over a new leaf for the DPJ. In his first policy speech to the Diet as prime minister, Kan sought to set his administration apart from the previous one by vowing to build “a strong economy, strong finances and strong social welfare”.

Kan stressed the need to jolt Japan out of its currently weak state, which he attributed to “anaemic economic growth, ballooning public debt and dwindling public trust in the viability of Japan's social security system”.

Observers and practitioners believe that the government is unlikely to announce any significant new policy initiatives, as Kan was already one of the main architects behind the previous administration’s economic policy, although some changes have just been announced in the DPJ election manifesto for the Upper House

election. For instance it drops the promise of doubling monthly child allowances to ¥26000 next year.

“I hope to carry over the torch of rebuilding Japan passed on to me by Hatoyama”, he observed at a press conference after his election. Alan Feldman, chief economist at Morgan Stanley in Japan, says that “although Kan’s initial speech did include some new elements, the main message was continuity with Hatoyama’s economic policies. Investors are likely to welcome the innovations, but to remain sceptical of the overall philosophy”.

However, economists believe Kan will face a mountain of challenges both at home and abroad in the near future. First, he needs to rebuild that political capital ahead of the upper house elections. Public support for the DPJ has recovered sharply after his appointment suggesting that voters have, for now, forgiven the ruling Democrats for the previous leaders’ policy mistakes. But it remains to be seen whether the initial popularity of the Kan administration will translate into a strong performance, and whether Kan will ultimately be given a strong enough mandate to push through difficult policy decisions.

Major newspaper polls give Prime Minister approval ratings of between 60 and 70 percent; but such ratings can be very fickle. The election will be an uphill battle for the DPJ. The DPJ is without one of its coalition partners, the Social Democratic Party who left the ruling camp over Hatoyama’s failure to remove the US base from Okinawa, as demanded by its leader, Mizuho Fukushima. The two parties that remain, the DPJ and the People’s New Party, hold 122 of the upper house’s 242 seats, the slimmest majority possible. Should the coalition lose that majority in the coming election, it would mean a split Diet — its majority would only remain in the lower house. And that would make passing bills extremely difficult.

Fisher Capital Management Report- Japan Elects a New Premier Part 1: Kan will have plenty on the economic front too. In terms of fiscal policy, as a former Finance minister he has turned into a fiscal conservative, having been a champion of funnelling revenue from higher taxes toward government spending in order to achieve economic growth. “Economic growth, fiscal reconstruction and social welfare reform will be achieved together”, he told reporters. 

Fisher Capital Management Report Part 2 - The UK Emergency Budget

Fisher Capital Management Report  Part 2- The UK has had an emergency budget and it could have been much worse. The heavy lifting is being done by a rise in VAT bringing in £13 billion. On the spending side the cuts are achieved by freezing public sector pay, indexing state benefits to the CPI rather than the faster-rising RPI and freezing child benefits. State pensions will be indexed to the higher of wages or the CPI but the pension age will

be raised to 66 fairly soon.

Interest rates are projected to remain low, with inflation absent; and it is possible that Quantitative Easing will need to be resumed but on present prospects this seems unlikely to be necessary. Another concern is with the regulative proposals. There is an antibank mentality developing in this coalition government, which is

most unfortunate; much of it seems to emanate from Vince Cable and the Lib Dems.

Yet a moment’s thought should be enough to convince one that we need bank credit expansion and a return to competition on the bank high street in order to foster recovery and enterprise. Ever tougher bank regulation is what was needed before, at the peak of   expansion, not now in the slough of recession giving way to recovery.

Talk of breaking up banks fails to recognise the natural economics of banks, which favours scale and risk-spreading. Talk of capping mortgage lending at modest percentages of income is also unfortunate when the UK want to see a revival of it’s housing market, now once again back in the doldrums.

A last area of concern is the state of the labour market. The UK do have near ‘full employment’ if one discounts the modest temporary effect of recession. But this only applies to those normally looking for work.

Fisher Capital Management Report Part 2 - The UK Emergency Budget: There is now a large group of people who  are claiming benefits of various sorts in order to stay out of the labour market. Disability benefit is one route;  nother is the having of children in order to get child benefits and related parenting allowances, with tragic consequences for some children.

Tightening up of this has been signalled in the budget but this has happened before, with no proper follow-through.

Another UK labour market problem is the resurgence of union power as Labour loosened the union laws passed before 1997. One key loosening was the 12-week rule, which allows workers to breach  their contracts with impunity when on strike until 12 weeks of strike have occurred. When strikes are designed for short periods for maximum disruption, this 12 week period can take a long time to trigger. During it the employing firm is unable to defend itself by recruiting a different labour force.

Under the pre-1997 legislation firms were able to dismiss workers in breach of contract, provided they did so in a non-discriminatory way. This led to a huge reduction in strikes and a large rise in UK productivity, to the great general benefit.

As we have seen in recent years, certain unions are exploiting this 12-week rule to damage the economy — the classic case has been the BA dispute where UNITE has persisted in attempting to defend well-above market wages for cabin crew.

In sum the budget was a decent start in restoring fiscal sanity. But only a start.

The UK now needs urgent attention to the creation of a proper tax system with low marginal rates but generating a reliable revenue source — the two are perfectly compatible. It needs sense and restraint in regulation. Finally they need to reform their labour market yet again.