Japan Government to Buy 20 Trillion Yen in Stock to Support Their Markets

You have to wonder why they just don't give money directly to their people, and allow them to use their discretion to invest and consume, rather than use the money to prop up a zombie market at the direction of a central planning bureaucracy.

It probably speaks volumes about their priorities in valuing the keiretsu and its crypto-medieval organization over the individual. The artificial composition of their economy is remarkable, and understood by few economists in the West with the cultural bias of their models.

You have to wonder if there will be any auto stocks in that share festival.

Japan plans to buy $227 billion in shares to boost market
By Michael Kitchen
8:11 a.m. EST Dec. 18, 2008

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Japan's government said Thursday it is submitting a bill to parliament allowing for the purchase of 20 trillion yen ($227 billion) in stock to help stabilize the Japanese stock market, Kyodo news reported.

Under the bill, the Banks' Shareholding Acquisition Corporation, originally created in January 2002, would resume buying shares from banks and other entities, the Japanese news agency reported.

The bill would be introduced early next month "with an eye to implementing the measure by the end of March," the report quoted lawmakers as saying. The Liberal Democratic Party had intially considered just 10 trillion in stock purchases, but the size was roughly doubled to 20 trillion yen at the request of its ruling coalition partner, the New Komeito party, the report said.