Masaru Kaneko, an economics professor at Hosei University, is harshly critical of the way the Liberal Democratic Party has been spending taxpayers' money on public works projects and to bail out big banks.

The state of the economy will be at the forefront of people's minds as they cast votes in the June 25 general election, and the LDP-led government has pledged that it will do whatever it can to revive the economy.

But Kaneko believes such public spending, generously allocated in the name of salvaging the economy, has only created an "unproductive" link between government spending, the budget deficit and the bailout of large construction firms and banks.