Why a future planning agency
By Benjamin FulfordFebruary 1, 2015
When I first came to Japan in 1980 I was amazed to see fish swimming in the rivers in downtown Tokyo. Japan of the 1980’s was by many standards the most advanced nation on earth. By 1985, after decades of sizzling economic growth, they had the highest per capita income on earth, the lowest gap between the rich and poor in any developed nation and a very healthy natural environment. They also were the greatest creditor nation on earth, having supplied cars, electronics and other goodies to the rest of the planet often in exchange for IOUs.
One of the reasons I chose to go to university in Japan was to study the system that had made this miracle possible. This is how it worked. Japan’s government was run by a combination of highly talented bureaucrats, industrialists and politicians with deep roots in their local constituencies. They presided over a system that was a combination of central planning, free market capitalism and socialism.
At the apex of the system was an organization known as the Economic Planning Agency. It was run by a group of about 30 members of the bureaucratic, industrial, academic and political ruling elite. They would come up with a 5 year plan for the country. Politicians would explain in detail what their voters desired. Bureaucrats would explain exactly how much money there was available to realistically meet their desires. Industrialists would explain what could be profitably done to contribute to the plan. The country as a whole also had a mission: to overtake and surpass the West.
The system was not like the central planning of Stalinist economies, where even such thing as the amount of toothpaste was centrally planned, because it was based on market forces.
The plan might, for example, call for doubling the amount of roads, sewers and port facilities over a 5 year period, and would allocate the money for this. However, it was private companies who bid for the actual work. Furthermore, companies were free to carry out their own independent activities regardless of the bigger plan.
The only countries that had systems arguably as good as the old Japanese system were the Scandinavian countries, Germany and Canada.
In 1985 the US government set out to destroy this system out of what I can only describe jealousy and fear of being over-taken. George Bush Sr., then vice-president, ordered Japan to dismantle this system and hand economic control over to American oligarchs (gangsters). When the Japanese refused, they shot down Japan airlines flight 123 on August 12, 1985. On September 22nd, 1985, Japan signed the Plaza Accord that signaled the beginning of the systematic destruction of the Japanese economic system. Since then, Japan’s economy has been looted to the tune of about $5 trillion by American and European gangster oligarchs.
The system that created the Japanese miracle was by no means perfect. One flaw was the system of forced early retirement of low paid bureaucrats. This meant that bureaucrats, instead of thinking of the greater good of their country, had an interest in currying favour with the companies they regulated in exchange for cushy, post-early retirement jobs. The other problem was the system of lifetime employment. While this did create employee loyalty to firms, it was also a feudal system that made it almost impossible for people to change jobs. The political system was also radically biased in favour of rural citizens and against urban residents.
Singapore, to this day, has a better system, where bureaucrats are not forced to retire early and get paid as much as their private sector counter-parts. That is why Singapore keeps sizzling along to this day.
In any case, China’s Deng Xiaoping carefully studied the Japanese and Singaporean systems and adopted them to China. That is one of the main reasons for China’s long economic boom.
