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Kotegawa in Russia—Trump Election Marks World Shift from Finance to Manufacturing
4 April 2017
PRESS RELEASE EIRNS—Daisuke Kotegawa, the former Finance official and IMF representative from Japan, told the Moscow Economic Forum last week that the Trump election signals that "the world economy transforms from financial capitalism back to a manufacturing- oriented one," which will "become clearer if the separation of investment banking from commercial banking proposed by Trump" gets implemented. Kotegawa explained that, as a Finance official in 1997-98, he had withdrawn the banking license of Credit Suisse for their sucking Japanese insurance companies into derivative swindles which left them bankrupt, adding that he would have done the same to AIG, but they didn’t have a banking license (he hinted that doing so may have prevented the AIG role in the disaster of 2008 in the U.S.). On Russia’s current internal economic problems, he said that the "terrible policies advocated by Prof. Jeffrey Sachs and his team, and the Goldman Sachs people, destroyed the confidence of the Russian people in the banking system in 1998" through the "shock therapy" policies which stole their deposits. Restoring confidence in the banks is crucial to restore credit, he said. He also pointed to the deterioration of the infrastructure in the U.S., but added that Trump is directly addressing it. He backs Trump’s call for government support for emerging small business; for a large stimulus for infrastructure; and for bringing peace to the Middle East and the huge reconstruction required there, which will benefit both U.S. and Russian business. In a half-hour interview on RT on March 23, on the Worlds Apart show with Oksana Boyko, Kotegawa reviewed these same issues, adding that he believed Trump’s priorities were, first, ending the free-trade deals, then a large stimulus, then removing the regulations on small banks and businesses, and then he will be able to move on Glass-Steagall, taking on the big banks. He explained that since the Japan banking crisis in the 1990s, when several banks were closed and bankers jailed, the bankers have remained "very cautious," and that despite being accused of having caused a "lost decade" in Japan, the refusal to fully join the derivative fiasco saved their banking system, while the U.S. and Europe have "never recovered" from the 2008 crisis. Asked by Boyko why the western nations never took action to jail and reign in the bankers, Kotegawa answered with a smile: "Democracy works better in Asia." Given the revelations about Susan Rice today in the color revolution against Trump, it is useful to note that Kotegawa named Rice as the person who put enormous pressure on Abe in 2014 to join the sanctions regime against Russia and not to visit Putin in 2016. Abe wisely rejected this "advice." |