#2-13 Europe's rescue plan [Oct 29th, 2011]

Europe's rescue plan [Oct 29th, 2011]

Sendagaya Good Morning Café Nov 6th, 2011

Ogawa, Yamagata, Tomozawa, Miyabe, Murakami and Sugahara

Articles we discussed:

[Japan’s free-trade dilemma] Yes, it should

[Briefing] [Hedge fund in Asia] The crocodiles are coming

[Finance &Economics][Student loans in America] Nope, just debt

This week we gathered at Sendagaya, Good morning café. We had a guest this week. Sugahara-san is a lady who is a translator of National Geographic magazine. She found our group on the Internet and tried to make contact with us. We appreciate for her effort. Murakami joined us for the second time. We already know each other but I met him for the first time in this study group. 6 people gathered and we discussed mainly TPP, funding for students and briefly hedge funds.

The first article was about student loans in America. The article reckons that student loans in America could possibly be the next credit bubble. Ogawa chose it to know why they think it is and wanted to discuss who should pay the cost of education. Education benefits students themselves principally but also benefits the society as well. Parents are responsible for their children education when they are small. But whether parents are responsible for children’s college education or not is debatable. Our debate quoted the case of the university of Tokyo, which offers tuition free system for students from low-income households.

Secondly we moved to a topic of TPP. The Economist had not taken the topic in previous issues but this time the prime minister of Japan, Mr. Noda decided to join the discussion of TPP so they focused on the topic. Tomozawa made his paper summarizing approval argues and disapproval argues. The interesting point of our discussion was an exit strategy Japan might have. Investments for international project always have a withdrawal clause for the case the project turns out to be unprofitable. If we reckon TPP is not profitable to join, could Japan make a decision to withdrawal from the treaty? Does Japan have an exit strategy? Japan should have a kind of withdrawal clauses or principles that we can make negative deceptions.

Lastly we picked up the article about Hedge funds in Asia. Hedge funs see Asia as a new centre for their business. But they will have to work hard to make it so. We followed up the way of making profits by hedge funds. They hedge risks of a downturn trend. We also discussed social values of them.  Considering a market as a whole, we need them to keep liquidity of the market. But some argues that they are like evils that make no values to our society. We need more discussions about it.

This café located by the side of Tokyo gymnasium. So sometime we hit an athletic competition held in the gym. The café is crowded every time we use it. The day was also.