Japan + Euro

choi

Onimitsu Onishi and Martin Fackler, Utility Reform Eluding Japan After Nuclear Plant Disaster; Power industry proves a formidable foe. New York Times, Nov 18, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/1 ... sq=tepco&st=cse

Quote:

"'Now’s our chance,' said Naoki Inose, Tokyo’s vice governor, invoking an ancient proverb about attacking a wild dog only after it has fallen into a river: “On March 11, Tepco became the dog that fell into the river. Only then can you fight against such a formidable foe.”

So formidable a foe, in fact, that just eight months after Japanese leaders vowed the nuclear disaster — like the end of World War II — would lead to a kind of rebirth, the chances for fundamental change are rapidly slipping away.

Already, the reformers have lost a crucial ally: Naoto Kan, who as prime minister had called for an end to nuclear power and major changes to the power industry. He was eased out of office with the help of Japan’s most powerful corporate lobby, a faithful Tepco supporter that, like many members of Japan’s establishment, has benefited from the company’s largess.

And Mr. Kan’s successor, Yoshihiko Noda, whose party came to power promising to build a new Japan, instead joined the old guard to rally around nuclear power, and Tepco.

“In the early months after the accident, I thought there was a real chance for change, but now the move to turn Fukushima into an opportunity for radical reforms is losing steam,” said Hiroshi Okumura, an economist and the author of “Dismantling Tepco.” “There’s a very big risk that Japan’s lost decade, which became the lost 20 years, will now become the lost 30 years.”

My comment:
(a) Naoki INOSE  猪瀬 直樹  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoki_Inose

(i) 猪; 豬; 豕 【い】 (n): "hog (esp. a wild boar, but also including the domesticated pig)"
Jim Breen's online Japanese dictionary
(ii) His words in the first quotation alludes to a Japanese phrase 水に落ちた犬は打て or 川に落ちた犬は、棒で叩け, which of course is derived from 打落水狗. 魯迅, 论“费厄泼赖”应该缓行. 《莽原》半月刊第一期. Jan 10, 1926 (费厄泼赖: "fair play")
(b) Hiroshi OKUMURA  奥村 宏

His book: Dismantling TEPCO  『東電解体―巨大株式会社の終焉』（東洋経済新報社 、2011）

東電 is abbreviation of 東京電力.
(c) This report is about against civilian nuclear power. There is no need to read the rest. It looks likely that Dr Okumura is correct about "the lost 30 years."

(2) Landon Thomas, Rise of a Euro Doomsaye; Once scorned, a skeptical analyst gains admirers. New York Times, Nov 18, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/1 ... l%20euro&st=cse
("To be sure, Mr [Bernard] Connolly was not the only analyst who raised early warning flags about the euro project. Economists like Martin Feldstein of Harvard and Paul Krugman, a Princeton economist who writes an Op-Ed page column for The New York Times, have been longtime critics, as were many experts in Britain, which has long been skeptical of the euro. But few have gone on to devote more or less their entire professional career to exposing Europe’s monetary fault lines. Unlike many critics of the euro, Mr Connolly, 61, plies his trade mostly in private, eschewing cable television programs, opinion pages and policy journals.")

My comment: What is amyusing is the book cover of his book (appearing in web page 2)
Bernard Connolly, The Rotten Heart of Europe; The dirty war for Europe's money. Faber & Faber, 1995 (hard cover).

The caption in NYT says, "The cover of Mr. Connolly's 1995 book, now out of print." What is amazing is Amazon.com referred to sellers of three used books (paperback, printed in 1997). Asking price?  "from $688.88."