Message from lhuff

[Anonymous]

yes Speed Racer is from Japan.

In the morning session I was disappointed to by the lack of Ninjas and surprisingly impressed by use of the ingenious use of post office as a rural banking system. What a great way for the govt to get capital for all the infrastructure projects of the 1950's. This not only helped the Japanese citizens, it kept the govt from borrowing money at high interest rates for foreign govts or banks. Definitely something to use in Econ.

I would use this as an example of what happens when one party controls a government for too long. Japan & Mexico are both nominally democratic, but have been ruled by one party since the creation of their modern states. Mexico's PRI and Japan's LDP both start out strong and end up corrupt and willing to do almost anything to kept their power. We saw another parallel between S Korea and Mexico when the ruling party was finally defeated. In both cases it did not go smoothly, but in the end the change to a new party gave the country a chance to clean house a bit. It will be interesting to watch what happens when another political party finally trumps the LDP.