Posts Tagged ‘meeting’
East Asian Leaders meet in solidarity in Fukushima
Wen Jiabao, Naoto Kan and Lee Myung-bak at evacuation center in Fukishima City
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
The leaders of China, Japan and South Korea publicly munched on farm produce grown near the stricken Japanese nuclear plant on Saturday in a show of solidarity with Japan’s recovery efforts.
Premier Wen Jiabao of China and President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea arrived in Japan on Saturday for a two-day meeting that was expected to focus on resolving differences over Japan’s handling of the nuclear crisis.
China and South Korea have criticized Japan for spilling radiation into the air and sea, and have banned imports of farm products from areas near the plant, citing what they call inadequate checks for radiation. Japan says the restrictions are unjustified.
Before the meeting began in Tokyo on Saturday night, the Japanese prime minister, Naoto Kan, took the leaders to visit a refugee shelter in Fukushima, 40 miles from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant that was crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
Before entering the shelter, a converted gymnasium, Mr. Kan steered the group to a table displaying strawberries, cucumbers and other produce grown in Fukushima Prefecture.
The leaders, who did not appear to have been surprised by the photo op, smiled and nibbled gamely. “Very delicious,” Mr. Wen said…
Before meeting Mr. Kan, the two visiting leaders also paid separate visits to the city of Natori, which was devastated by the tsunami.
“The warm feelings of the two leaders came through in their visits to disaster areas and an evacuation center,” Mr. Kan told reporters. “I’m glad they came.”
No doubt import restrictions to China and South Korea will be reduced following this meeting. The interesting bits will be – what else is resolved over the weekend?
The earthbound disaster has pushed Japan’s economy into an artificial recession. Individual Japanese corporations have started working their way out of the context of parts suppliers and individual enterprises both being handicapped by the damage to physical plant and infrastructure. Collective effort will be welcomed – no doubt – to aid Japan’s recovery.
No surplus of jobs – but, the Fed says we’re heading towards normal…
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission
Almost exactly two years after it embarked on the biggest financial rescue in American history, the Federal Reserve has acknowledged that the economy was pulling out of its downward spiral and announced a step back toward normal policy.
Though the central bank stopped well short of declaring victory, policy makers issued their most optimistic assessment in more than a year by noting signs of stabilization in household spending, financial markets and inventory building by corporations…
The central bank cautioned, however, that the recovery would slow and that unemployment would probably remain high for the next year, and it reiterated that it would keep its benchmark short-term interest rate at virtually zero for an extended period.
But it also announced that it would wrap up its program to buy $300 billion worth of Treasury bonds by the end of October. The program was one of several tools invoked to drive down long-term interest rates and indirectly reduce the cost of home mortgages and corporate borrowing.
The move signaled that policy makers were confident enough to remove one of their emergency props for the financial markets. In its statement, the central bank acknowledged that conditions in both the stock market and the credit markets had improved in the last several months…
Despite growing confidence that the worst of the crisis is behind them, Fed officials made it clear they were still more worried about rising unemployment than a resurgence of inflation.
Too bad our beancounter politicians haven’t reached that sophisticated assessment. No doubt they will continue to whine like an atomic squadron of doomsday bees whenever something like Cash For Clunkers comes along and helps working folks.
In my working life I’ve been through a few of these going all the way back to that Great Administrator, Dwight David Eisenhower. Back in the day, we couldn’t get conservative Democrats and racist Republicans to unwind enough to approve things like an extension of unemployment benefits.
Life at the country club was too exciting for them to be concerned.
Bank CEOs agree on mutual support for Obama’s economic plans
Wow! One daring guy in a pinstripe suit.
President Barack Obama won support from top bankers on Friday for his efforts to rid financial institutions of bad debts, but differences remained over broader U.S. plans for the financial industry.
Chief executives from Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase and other financial giants met Obama at the White House and echoed his call for cooperation to help the economy. But their statements about tough trading conditions in March overshadowed the positive spin the executives and the White House sought to give to the meeting.
“The basic message is we’re all in this thing together,” Wells Fargo Chief Executive John Stumpf told reporters after the meeting, with other bank executives at his side…
The meeting came just days after the U.S. Treasury Department provided details on a government plan to cleanse banks’ balance sheets of up to $1 trillion in distressed loans and securities, a plan the banks will have to support in order for it to work.
White House advisers said the president wanted to get a snapshot of the economy from the banking chiefs, and the message they sent was lukewarm. I watched the interviews with the CEO’s after the meeting and I’d say this Reuters account is more negative than what I witnessed.
