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Strategies & Market Trends : Telebras (TBH) & Brazil -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TokyoMex who wrote (8327)	9/20/1998 1:34:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 22640

Brazil's Cardoso Criticizes G-7; Calls For Expansion Dow Jones Newswires RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP)--Brazil's President Fernando Henrique Cardoso criticized the group of seven industrialized nations, known as G-7, and said it should be expanded to include developing countries, a newspaper reported Sunday. "G-7 is now demonstrating that it can't function as a world directorate because it does not have the strength to do so", Cardoso told the O Globo newspaper. Emerging nations like Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, India and China should be included in the group, the president was quoted as saying. Cardoso said the G-7 should support more international funds being sent to protect countries from speculative attacks. "The International Monetary Fund needs more resources because those it has are scant in the face of the world's challenges," Cardoso was quoted as saying. G-7 members are the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan.

To: TokyoMex who wrote (8327)	9/20/1998 1:36:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Respond to of 22640

Opposition Party Succeeds in Redrawing Japanese Plans for Bailing Out Banks An INTERACTIVE JOURNAL News Roundup Japanese lawmakers reached an accord Friday on cleaning up the country's ailing bank system, an agreement that would allow the government to liquidate or nationalize crippled bands and curtail the powers of the Ministry of Finance. In a dramatic shift of power, a new "financial revitalization" committee will be established to oversee the banking clean-up, and will eventually assume the Finance Ministry's authority to set policy for the financial industry. The plan should ease pressure for Japan's embattled prime minister, Keizo Obuchi, to resign. Mr. Obuchi, who took office at the end of July after a power struggle within his party, has seen his public approval ratings sink amid political wrangling over Japan's wallowing economy. It also gives Mr. Obuchi some breathing room in his dealings with the U.S., which he is to visit next week. U.S. officials have been harshly critical of Japan's inaction in the face of spiraling regional problems threaten to swamp the global economy. "I determined that it wouldn't do for Japan, as the country with the world's second-largest economy, to be the source of a global collapse," Mr. Obuchi said after hammering out final provisions of the pact with Naoto Kan, head of the main opposition Democratic Party. The agreement, which remained short on details, capped a month of bargaining between Mr. Obuchi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the increasingly restive opposition. The leader of the main opposition Democratic Party, Naoto Kan, claimed complete victory in the bargaining. "Today's agreement basically represents the total acceptance of the [opposition] parties' proposals,'' Mr. Kan said. One of the biggest points of contention was curtailing the powers of Japan's mighty Finance Ministry. The prime minister agreed to opposition demands to transfer oversight of financial markets to the new committee by next June, a shift that could result in greater transparency and accountability in financial policy-making. An outline of the plan provided general goals: The government will be allowed to declare the failure of banks, without having a court declare the institution is bankrupt. When a bank fails, administrators may be appointed to liquidate it, or the government may step in to run and rehabilitate it under a "bridge bank" scheme until a private buyer for the institution is found. A Japanese version of the U.S. Resolution Trust Corp. will be set up by merging two existing debt-collection bodies, the Resolution and Collection Bank and the Housing Loan Administration Corp. The new body will use public money to buy bad debt from failed banks, nationalized banks and solvent ones. The body's bad-debt purchases would be completed by March 2001. The 13-trillion-yen pool of public funds established this spring to inject capital into troubled banks will be abolished. The plan announced Friday doesn't make clear whether any new scheme will be worked out to permit public capital injections into banks. A 17-trillion-yen pool of public funds made available to the Deposit Insurance Corp. to protect depositors will continue to exist. Standards for the disclosure of balance sheet information by banks, and penalties for improper disclosure, will be made stricter.

To: TokyoMex who wrote (8327)	9/20/1998 3:00:00 PM
From: Steve Fancy	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 22640

TM, with some signs of progress and the banking plan in Japan, see any potential for some short term trades in that country? With the Nikkei at 13983, barring a Clinton meltdown early next week, seems a 1000 point rise could be in the cards. Any idea where I can find a breakdown of the stocks in the Nikkei and their weighting, or other good ideas in Japan. My broker was suggesting Sony. I haven't done my homework on this yet this weekend, but any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks, sf