NYT, "일본이 한국을 걱정하고 있다"

[김영철]

NYT, "일본이 한국을 걱정하고 있다"

독도 문제로 韓日관계가 경색된 지금 한국이 일본 정부에 손을 내미는 일이 일어나지 않아야 할 것이다.

趙甲濟   

 오늘 미국의 뉴욕타임스는 '일본이 경제무대에서 더 큰 역할을 할 생각이다'는 제목의 기사를 실었다. 1조 달러의 외화보유고를 가진 일본의 영향력이 커질 것이라고 했다. 일본 은행들은 투기적인 투자를 많이 하지 않아 이번 금융위기로부터 안전한 편이다. 상대적으로 건강한 일본이 미국, 유럽, 한국을 도와주어야 한다는 여론이 일본에서 형성되고 있다는 게 기사의 요지였다.
 
 일본은 1990년대에 경제침체를 경험한 바 있어 先驗者로서 위기에 빠진 나라들을 도울 일이 있을 것이라고 이 신문은 보도했다. 경험 있는 회계사와 변호사들을 미국에 보내 不實채권 정리를 지원할 수도 있다는 것이다. 한국과 관련하여선 이런 요지의 분석도 있었다.
 
 <많은 일본의 정치 지도자들도 일본의 엄청난 외화를 금융위기 해소에 쓰는 데 동의하고 있다. 일본 국회의원들이 공개적으로 말하기를 꺼려하지만 그들의 가장 큰 걱정은 이웃한 한국이다. 한국의 외환 및 증권시장은 외국자본의 이탈로 큰 타격을 받았다. 일본 재무장관은 최근의 IMF 회의에서 IMF가 주관한다면 (금융위기를 겪고 있는 나라들에 대하여) 구제금융을 일본이 제공할 용의가 있다고 했다. 일본 지도자들은 1997년 IMF가 한국 등에 구제금융을 해줄 때 너무 엄격한 조건을 단 것을 상기시키면서 구제금융을 제공하더라도 조건이 완화되어야 한다는 견해를 보였다.>
 
 미국發 금융위기에도 상대적으로 타격을 덜 받고 있는 것이 일본과 중국이다. 앞으로 두 나라의 발언권이 국제사회에서 커질 것이다. 1990년대와 2000년대 초기 不況 속의 일본을 내려다 보았던 미국이 이제는 일본을 다시 봐야 할 상황이 되었다.
 
 1997년에 외환위기에 빠진 한국 정부는 일본에 특사를 보내 긴급 外貨 지원을 요청했으나 거절당하고 IMF에 구제를 신청했어야 했다. 당시 韓日 관계는 좋지 않았다. 이것도 일본의 거절에 일정한 영향을 끼쳤을 것이다.
 
 獨島 문제로 韓日관계가 경색된 지금 한국이 일본 정부에 손을 내미는 일이 일어나지 않아야 할 것이다. 國力(주로 경제력과 군사력)보다 외교가 너무 앞서 나가 國益을 해치는 일을 '외교적 不渡'라고 한다.
 
 
 ***************************************************
 Japan Considers Bigger Role on Economic Stage
 
 By MARTIN FACKLER
 Published: October 20, 2008
 TOKYO — Just six months ago, five or six “bulge bracket” investment banks stood astride the globe virtually dictating the terms of engagement of international finance — managing deals, pronouncing companies (or countries) investment-worthy or not, and dispensing advice that companies (and countries) ignored at their peril.
 
 Now those brash American institutions have been swept away or tamed. And as the global financial order convulses, some Japanese leaders say they believe their country should take a more active role in economic leadership. While many European leaders cast recriminations and “I told you sos,” Japan and much of Asia are considering how to fill some of the voids left behind.
 
 The United States will commit as much as a trillion dollars to bailing out its banks, but the Asians are flush with cash, even as countries like Japan — the world’s second-largest economy — face recessions of their own.
 
 Japan could use some of its formidable $2 trillion in reserves to help troubled nations, including South Korea, should that country’s own recent bailout of its banks prove inadequate.
 
 “The dominance of American financial giants has been shaken,” said Takatoshi Ito, a professor of economic policy at the University of Tokyo. “Now the tables have turned, and an Asian country like Japan can have the role of white knight and capital provider.”
 
 Some may wonder how Japan, which suffered its own severe downturn in the 1990s and has a stalling economy now, has the right to tell others what to do. But in recent days, lawmakers have begun floating proposals about how Japan, traditionally passive, might use its deep pockets and bitter experience from the 1990s to help global growth and, along the way, Japan’s own export-driven economy.
 
 Recently, Shoichi Nakagawa, Japan’s finance minister, offered some of Japan’s $996 billion in foreign currency reserves to rescue smaller nations threatened with bankruptcy by the global credit crisis. Other lawmakers have suggested using yen loans to help developing countries build roads and power plants, to revive global growth and rekindle demand for Japanese bulldozers and other goods.
 
 Another idea taking shape here calls for sending accountants and lawyers experienced from Japan’s 1990s financial cleanup to help American banks and regulators sift through mountains of toxic American mortgage debt.
 
 While it is unlikely that the nascent proposals would stem what many call the greatest financial crisis since the Depression, the fact they are being discussed at all underscores the vacuum in leadership being felt across the world in the wake of an American-led economic debacle. The fact they are appearing in Japan, a nation long content to follow Washington’s lead, reflects what many here call a movement toward a new global economic order in which no single country dominates.
 
 “With the relative decline in U.S. economic and financial power, it is inevitable that U.S. leadership will also decline,” said Yasuhisa Shiozaki, a former chief cabinet secretary. “We are seeing a new, multipolar economic regime starting to emerge.”
 
 Mr. Shiozaki and others are careful to point out that no one is talking about replacing Washington as guardian of the global economy. Rather, what they envision is a world where America shares oversight of the global economy with emerging powers like China and India, as well as Europe and Japan.
 
 They are also talking about each country bringing its various strengths to the table as a new, post-subprime world economic order takes shape.
 
 
 Many political leaders favor using Japan’s foreign reserves as a sort of war chest for combating the spreading global economic malaise. The finance minister’s offer, made at a meeting in Washington of the International Monetary Fund earlier this month, would keep Japanese money ready as a lifeline to strapped countries.
 
 While lawmakers here refuse to say so in public, their biggest source of concern appears to be neighboring South Korea, whose currency and stock markets have both been hard hit by flight of foreign capital.
 The finance minister’s plan calls for financing bailouts that will be administered by the International Monetary Fund.
 
 Japanese finance officials, however, have also been talking with the fund about easing the terms of its bailouts, said Naoyuki Shinohara, the vice minister for international affairs. Asia still has bitter memories of the harsh terms the fund imposed after the region’s 1997 financial crisis.
 
 Other proposals call for Japan to spur the global economy through billions in overseas development loans and other aid to build new infrastructure in developing countries in Asia and Africa, for example, as China has long done. A column in Asahi Shimbun, a leading daily, likened the idea to the Depression-era New Deal.
 
 “We need to create new sources of demand, or the global economy is in trouble,” said Hakuo Yanagisawa, a former financial services minister who now heads the Liberal Democratic Party’s project team on responding to the current financial crisis. “A purely financial response to the crisis is not enough.”
 
 Plans are also afoot to assemble teams of financial experts from Japan’s private sector and 1990s-era government bodies like the Resolution and Collection Corporation, which led Japan’s cleanup of its nonperforming real estate loans a decade ago, according to Mr. Yanagisawa.
 
 He said the Japanese government would soon put out feelers through its embassy in Washington about whether such help would be welcomed by American regulators, who face a similarly formidable task of calculating the worth of mountains of mortgage-backed securities polluting the American financial system.
 
 But many Japanese say Japan’s biggest contribution would be simply keeping its own economic house in order. They say it should bolster government spending to offset declines in exports to the United States, which appear to be pushing Japan’s $5 trillion economy into recession. A strong economy, and Japan’s relatively healthy banks, which largely avoided the subprime mess, would give the nation a new authority in global economic affairs.
 
 

[ 2008-10-21, 08:20 ]