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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Roy F who wrote (24252)	9/14/1998 3:06:00 PM
From: Joseph J. Clark	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 70976

Do the comments by CFO Bronson change anyone's short/long term outlook for AMAT? "The industry will recover, but not to its previous growth levels" Perhaps we will see low 20s/high teens by years end. I long for the days of lofty valuations.....July 1997.....damn!

To: Roy F who wrote (24252)	9/14/1998 5:27:00 PM
From: Jacob Snyder	Respond to of 70976

re: "Japan is the big imponderable": September 14, 1998 Japan's Ruling Party Fails to End Deadlock Over Banking Reform Dow Jones Newswires TOKYO -- Japan again failed to break a political deadlock over banking reform Monday as the ruling Liberal Democratic Party offered its third compromise proposal in a week, but the opposition rejected it, saying the plan didn't go far enough in addressing the crisis. Analysts said Japan looks increasingly unlikely to produce a plan to clean up its debt-ridden banking system before a meeting between Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi and U.S. President Bill Clinton in the U.S. A date for the meeting hasn't been set, but it is expected around Sept. 20. "There's a long way to go on this. The LDP is increasingly concerned that Obuchi will go to meet Clinton empty-handed, with nothing to offer," said Brian Waterhouse, banking analyst at HSBC Securities. The LDP proposed abolishing a 13-trillion-yen ($99.5 billion) pool of public funds the government established this spring to inject capital into weak banks. The opposition has denounced the pool as a means to conduct a state-funded bailout of LDP supporters in the banking and construction industries. In place of the pool, the LDP proposed talks with the opposition on creating a new framework for public aid to the banking sector. The framework would include clear rules for the use of public funds, making criteria stricter, obliging managers to take responsibility for problems at their institutions, and stating that shareholders should bear part of the cost, the LDP said. Because of the huge scale of Japan's bad-debt problem, the opposition isn't against the use of public funds in principle, merely the way in which the LDP initially planned to use them. So the LDP's latest proposal appeared to offer a way out of the political logjam. The Nikkei 225-Stock Average surged 310.39 points, or 2.23%, to 14227.37 Monday as banking shares jumped on anticipation that parliament was close to passing banking clean-up legislation. However, soon after the market closed, the main opposition Democratic Party, which is maintaining a common position on banking reform with two smaller parties, torpedoed the LDP's proposal. "This is absolutely not enough," said Eisei Ito, a senior Democratic Party official who is responsible for drafting his party's policy on banking reform. Yukio Hatoyama, deputy secretary-general of the Democratic Party, denied speculation that his party was trying to use the stalemate over banking reform to force Mr. Obuchi from office. But he said that if Mr. Obuchi really wanted to present President Clinton with progress on Japanese economic policy, he should present the opposition parties' banking bills. Opposition officials slammed the LDP's new offer as too vague. For example, it didn't make clear what the LDP would do with troubled Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Ltd., they said. The LDP had intended to use the 13-trillion-yen pool to inject public funds into LTCB and facilitate a proposed rescue merger between it and Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co. The opposition says LTCB should be taken over by the government and liquidated, a scheme that could include the transfer of its healthy operations to Sumitomo Trust. The prospect of the government abandoning the rescue merger of LTCB -- or at least altering the scheme so that it became even less attractive to shareholders -- sent the bank's shares plunging Monday. LTCB stock fell 11 yen, or 22%, to 38 yen in heavy trading, after hitting an all-time low of 19 yen during the day. By contrast, Sumitomo Trust shares soared 22 yen, or 6.11%, to 382 yen, reflecting how unenthusiastic investors have been about the burden Sumitomo Trust might assume in a merger with LTCB. Another unresolved area, Mr. Ito said, is the opposition's demand that an independent body be established to oversee the banking cleanup, and that it assume some powers from the Finance Ministry. Because it would involve reducing the powers of one of Japan's most influential institutions, the demand has become one of the most thorny areas of the banking debate. The LDP's vaguely worded proposal Monday said it didn't envisage any early transfer of the ministry's functions, but appeared to admit the possibility in the long term. "You could see the long shadow of the Finance Ministry in the wording of the proposal," said Mr. Hatoyama. LDP secretary-general Yoshiro Mori said his party would keep talking with the opposition despite the rejection of his party's latest proposal. The LDP lacks a majority in the upper house of parliament and so needs at least some opposition votes to pass bills there. Takashi Imai, chairman of the Japan Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren), Japan's most influential business lobby, said parliament needed to pass banking bills as soon as possible to prevent financial instability from snowballing and hurting the job market. "If the ruling and opposition parties aren't able to resolve the situation, it's inevitable that the Japanese people and the world will look at them with mistrust," Mr. Imai told a news conference.