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Politics : Clinton -- doomed & wagging, Japan collapses, Y2K bug, etc -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SOROS who wrote (416)	9/21/1998 1:09:00 PM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

Wall Street Journal - 09/21/1998 MOSCOW -- The Central Bank of Russia Monday canceled electronic trading of the ruble against the U.S. dollar on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange as it attempted to restart the country's banking system through additional cash injections. Russia Acts to Jump-Start Banks; Measure Allows Use of Treasurys On Friday, the central bank launched a massive operation aimed at offsetting a huge web of nonpayments that had paralyzed the entire banking system. The monetary authority issued billions of rubles in short-term credit and printed 900 million rubles in new cash Friday, a senior central bank official said Monday. First Deputy Chairman Andrei Kozlov estimated that Russia's financial crisis had caused a backlog of frozen client payments totaling more than 30 billion rubles. Last Friday, the central bank helped to settle 10 billion rubles of that amount, or one-third of the total owed between banks and their clients. Commercial banks in five major regions, including Moscow, had provided the central bank with data on 20 billion rubles of unsettled payments. To offer commercial banks credits for the settlements, the banks were ordered by Friday to submit to the central bank information on their overdue payments. Banks that hadn't done this will be banned from the foreign-exchange market, the central bank said Monday. However, because the central bank hadn't yet drawn up the list of disqualified banks, all ruble-dollar trading had to be canceled Monday, the central bank said in a release. In the absence of trading Monday, the official dollar rate will remain at Friday's rate of 16.3818 rubles to the dollar, the central bank said. In brief spot trading early in the session traders said the central bank's printing of rubles led to an initial selling of rubles. The central bank said it doesn't think the first emission of new cash will cause higher inflation and declined to say whether another cash injection will take place Friday, when more payment offsets will be carried out.

To: SOROS who wrote (416)	9/21/1998 1:10:00 PM
From: SOROS	Respond to of 1151

Wall Street Journal - 09/21/98 TOKYO -- A compromise plan to resuscitate Japan's troubled banking system appeared to be unraveling Monday, as ruling and opposition party leaders publicly fought over just what was agreed upon. Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi struck the banking bill deal with opposition parties late last week as he prepared to leave for his first summit with U.S. President Clinton. Mr. Obuchi is hoping to cite the deal as evidence Japan is making progress in cleaning up its bad loan mess when he confers with Mr. Clinton on Tuesday. But whether he will be able to do that looked questionable on Monday, as sharp disputes emerged over exactly what had been agreed to in several key areas of the proposed package. Fears the deal might collapse sent Japanese stock prices spiraling down to a new 12-year low. At issue is the fate of the ailing Long-Term Credit Bank of Japan Ltd. and other lenders staggering under the weight of soured loans, many of which were extended before Japan's economy entered a prolonged slump nearly 10 years ago. En route to the U.S., Mr. Obuchi signaled that LTCB -- one of the country's biggest banks -- wouldn't be allowed to founder. That appeared to directly contradict opposition claims the bank would be declared insolvent and nationalized. "If the Long-Term Credit Bank were to fail, it would cause a major impact on the global economy," Mr. Obuchi told reporters. Also on Monday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiromu Nonaka expressed support for using $97.5 billion in previously approved funds to bail out distraught banks, indicating the ruling party was backing away from a concession to scrap the funding plan. In response to the ruling party's apparent backtracking, opposition leader Naoto Kan, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, has warned the entire pact was in danger of falling apart. Another opposition leader, Democratic Socialist Party head Takako Doi, said she doubted the compromise would successfully be rendered into legislation without significant alterations. "Whether there was really an agreement between the ruling party and the opposition is a question," Mr. said. "A lot is going to change while the agreement gets written into law." The uncertainty comes before details of the preliminary accord are hammered out in a package of six bills. The ruling party needs opposition support if the bills are to win passage in the upper house of Parliament, where it doesn't have a majority. A third contested issue involves the oversight powers of Japan's Finance Ministry, which has been tainted by its inability to resolve the banking industry's woes and the implication of its officials in an influence-peddling scandals earlier this year. The opposition has demanded that the ministry's regulatory authority over the financial industry be wholly transferred to a separate institution. Mr. Nonaka, however, said that the ministry is unlikely to lose its policy planning and global finance monitoring functions. With Japan's banks in clear need of action, the widening political gap concerned many analysts. "It is distressing to see how much political time is being taken up by bickering," said Brian Waterhouse, a banking analyst in the Tokyo office of James Capel Pacific Ltd.

To: SOROS who wrote (416)	9/21/1998 1:22:00 PM
From: SOROS	Read Replies (5) \| Respond to of 1151

WATCH NETANYAHU -- DANGEROUS GROUND AHEAD Ha'aretz - Israel - 09/21/98 U.S. special Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross was meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last night after Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat reportedly said he is willing to meet with Netanyahu in the U.S. Arafat made the statement following his meeting with Ross, held in Gaza City, Agence France-Presse reported. Winding up 11 days of shuttle diplomacy, Ross met with Arafat to try to break a 19-month peacemaking deadlock between Israel and the Palestinians. "We have made some heady but there is still work to be done," Ross told reporters in Gaza after his meeting with Arafat. He added that "the intention to move forward on the part of both sides, at least as I've seen in my discussions, is clearly there." He said serious and productive efforts to narrow gaps had been made during his mission. Ross was due to leave for home last night after the meeting with Netanyahu, which was still continuing at press time. On Friday Ross gave a positive assessment of his mission, saying he had made headway in negotiations with both sides. U.S. diplomatic sources in Jerusalem sounded an equally optimistic note ahead of Ross's farewell meeting with Arafat, saying excitement was spreading about the possibility of a deal on a further Israeli handover of West Bank land to the Palestinians. "There is this little 'boomlet' of excitement among the people close to the parties. They are starting to say something might be developing here," the sources said. Despite American optimism, Palestinian Information Minister Yasser Abed Rabbo said after the weekly Palestinian cabinet meeting on Friday "there was no substantial progress in the talks on the main issues that were discussed" In Washington on Thursday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Ross was making "steady progress" towards a deal that would include a 13 percent withdrawal from the West Bank, a new security cooperation deal between Israel and the PA, and several concrete improvements for the Palestinians, including a safe passage route between Gaza and the West Bank, and the opening of a Palestinian airport in Gaza. Albright said she would meet Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when both attend the UN General Assembly session in New York next week. The format and venue of that meeting, or meetings, had yet to be decided. The U.S. State Department said on Friday a three-way meeting in New York between the United States, Israel and the Palestinians could not be ruled out.