As suggested in an earlier column (Nov. 16), the Liberal Democratic Party faction leader, Koichi Kato, probably deserved to fail in his recent attempt to overthrow his party's leadership. His timing and approach were flawed. His call for immediate structural reform and fiscal restraint was bad economics.
In an NHK television interview on the eve of his threatened vote for the opposition's no-confidence motion against Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, he said his economic policies were needed because the probable collapse of the U.S. stock market next year meant that Japan would have to prepare for a global economic crisis.
But wasn't the main reason for the disastrous failure of similar policies in 1996 supposed to have been the 1997 Asian economic crisis? If his reformist policies could not survive that Asian crisis, they certainly would not survive a world crisis tomorrow.