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Japan PM to urge removing toxic assets from balance sheets
AFP - Saturday, November 15
WASHINGTON (AFP) - - Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso is to push at the G20 meeting here for the United States and other crisis-hit countries to give top priority to removing toxic assets from balance sheets.
The United States has abandoned plans to buy up toxic mortgage assets at the heart of the global financial crisis, saying the money would be better spent on cash injections for struggling banks and to help shore up consumer credit markets.
But Aso will remind leaders of the Group of 20 industrialized and developing countries gathered for a weekend summit in Washington that a key lesson learned from Japan's financial crisis in the 1990s was the need for swift action to address the non-performing loans problem, a Japanese official said Friday.
"The first priority is the full disclosure of NPLs and the removal of those troubled assets from their balanced sheets," Japanese foreign ministry spokesman Kazuo Kodama told reporters ahead of the G20 talks.
"I learned that US Treasury Secretary (Henry) Paulson mentioned that for the time being, the US government attaches priority to the issue of recapitalization of banks rather than the disposing the non performing loans," Kodama noted.
"Our answer, our position is the early and thorough disclosure of NPLs (non-performing loans) ... troubled assets must come first," Kodama said.
A US plan to purchase bad assets that triggered the current financial crisis was at the heart of a 700-billion-dollar bailout plan approved by Congress so cash-strapped banks could again make consumer loans essential to driving the economy.
But on Wednesday, Paulson said the money earmarked to buy those debts would be better spent injecting cash directly into struggling banks and shoring up the market for consumer debt such as from credit cards and car loans.
Many analysts had questioned the about-face, which triggered another massive sell-off on world stock markets this week.
Kodama recalled that the US government and media had criticized Japan for acting too slowly in tackling its non-performing loans problem during its own financial crisis.
"Back in the 1990s, the Japanese government was criticized (for doing) too little, too late ... We admit that, so the resolution of the bad loan problem was delayed due to slow and insufficient disclosure by financial institutions," he said.
Kodama pointed out that recapitalization of banks was as "important" as removing bad loans from balance sheets. "They must go hand in hand."
Aso will also offer to lend up to 100 billion dollars to the International Monetary Fund to help provide financial lifelines to crisis-hit emerging countries and call on other IMF member countries such as oil-rich Saudi Arabia and cash-flush China to give more funds to the institution, Kodama said.
The IMF is expected to extend large loans to countries such as Iceland, Hungary and Ukraine to help them weather the current financial crisis.
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