BY AKIRA NORIMATSU
The book "What could we buy with that money?" written by Ryu Murakami argues with illustrations helpful for readers'understanding about what we could have bought and done, if we had 750 billion yen. The Japanese government used public funds to help fifteen major banks; The Industrial Bank of Japan, Sakura Bank, Fuji Bank, Sumitomo Bank, Daiwa Bank, Tokai Bank, Asahi Bank, Mitsui Trust Bank, Mitsubishi Trust Bank, Sumitomo Trust Bank, Toyo Trust Bank, Chuo Trust Bank、and Yokohama Bank. The outward reason for the investment is to help those seemingly solid banks, but it is in fact used to protect them from bankruptcy.
The public funds are part of public taxes. This means that the banks got the loans from us. By 2003 the money is supposed to be returned to us as soon as they show profits, but regarding the banks which have bad management, it is possible that they will fall into arrears with their repayment. Eventually the money may not be paid back.
It is the collapse of the so called Bubble that caused this situation. By this year (1999), it has been almost 10 years since the collapse of the Bubble economy of the early 1990s. Since that time, stock prices and the price of land have lost one thirds of their value. The collapse of the Bubble means that the value of assets which once swelled burst like a balloon in an instant.
Fortunes of the rich, which were made by borrowing heavily purchased with large borrowings before the collapse of the Bubble, disappeared and only the debt remains. Enterprises are in a state of debt excess, leading to their bankruptcy. In the cases where loans can not be secured by the banks, it is invitable that the banks also suffer from the loss. One of the main causes for today's depression occurred as a chain reaction. So the government made a decision to invest public funds to help them.
According to Mr. Murakami, we could possibly buy almost anything thing we want with those public funds. For example , if we constructed a barrier-free town with the population of 1 million like Sendai city, it would cost 50 billion yen. In another example, there are 130 million school age children all over the world and the expenses for their education add up to 840 billion yen . Furthermore, if we invite citizens over 65 to a Sushi shop on Senior Citizen's Day, the bill would be 200 billion yen. In easier terms, if the Japanese government distributed rice costing 4,000 thousand yen per 10kg to all the Japanese people, we would get 150kg of rice each.
As mentioned above, we can do or buy anything with such enormous sums of money. There are better ideas in my opinion than investing in helping banks that have a doubtful future. But the responsibility lies in us, because we are indifferent to our social problems. Mr. Murakami insists in the conclusion of his book that, first of all , it is important that everyone know something about politics and economics. Once we know something about these things, we will begin to consider them. Then we can start to search for a way to solve the problems.