An economic package Japan adopted last week to speed up the disposal of bad bank loans and fight deflation was disappointing and a step back from original reform proposals, a U.S. economist said.
"The package makes me very sad because it does even less than I had hoped," Adam Posen, a senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics, a Washington-based think tank, said in a recent interview with Kyodo News. "I don't think that anybody in the United States government honestly believes that things are going to get better as a result of this."
Before Japan adopted the package on Oct. 30, the U.S. government -- as well as private economists and analysts inside and outside of Japan -- threw strong support behind the original reform measures proposed by Financial Services Minister Heizo Takenaka, the package's main architect.
"I was hoping Prime Minister (Junichiro) Koizumi would give him more support and (that) they would force the issue a little further than they did," Posen said. "They didn't."