Book Review > The Ministry

A book about the Japanese Ministry of Finance. Serious investors wishing to understand some of the underlying problems may find this book more relevant than at the time of publication. Develops the proposition that: "Japan's Ministry of Finance is much more than just a a government department. It is a political, economic, and intellectual force without parallel in the developed world. It enjoys a greater concentration of powers, formal and informal, than any comparable body in any other industrialised democracy."
The role played by the ministry in the stock market bubble of the late 1980s when the Nikkei reached almost 40,000 points, and its subsequent demise; the way in which the ministry has managed to deflect political attempts to make it more accountable to parliament; its mistakes in supervising financial institutions; the way in which it was able to threaten a massive sell-off in US government bonds to influence US trade policy - these are interesting examples to support Hartcher's thesis of unenlightened self-interest, unprecedented influence, and arrogant bureaucratic power.
The book also contains a warning that is a little closer to home - there is a need to remain alert to the danger of allowing single bureaucracies and unaccountable elite groups to develop too much power or influence.