#6 Now, kill his dream (April 30th, 2011)

#6　Now, kill his dream (April 30th, 2011 Full edition)

May 14, 2011 (SUN) 10:00~12:00

At SHINJUKU

ONO, OGAWA, NAGAO

[International] When others are grabbing your land

[Briefing] Law firms: A less gilded future

[Asia] China’s population: The most surprising demographic crisis

[Finance & Economics] Cutting it fine

   This week we gathered in Shinjuku. Nagao was the first time to join our group. He loves to discuss social issues so his join is, so to speak, “innovation” by Ono. We discussed about 4 articles and had a short talk about Osama bin Laden.

   The First article was “When others are grabbing your land” from international that Ogawa chosen. It is about acquisition of farmland in poor countries. We picked up the issue because it is the typical development issue we have to keep on looking. The article insists that such an acquisition is more like “Land grabs” than “development opportunities” showing facts of hot land deals. This phenomenon itself is not a problem because it is the case of supply and demand. However in Africa, there are unfair relationships between foreign investors and local elites and corruption. We discussed about the solution and concluded transparency of contracts and establish of law institution are the goals.

   Second is from Briefing “Law firms: A less gilded future”. The photo on the top of the article is a beautiful lady sitting and tearing her hair out in front of a legal book. As this image shows this article focuses on a structural change the legal business has undergone. Ever-growing profits are no longer guaranteed in their business. Nor, for some firms, is survival. We discussed profession and business. Qualified professions such as lawyers and doctors are considered as “good” professions if they can pass the high level exams. This is because these professions don’t suffer from cutthroat competition other workers are confronting. However, the environment around them is changing so they also are confronting competition. We mainly discuss about doctors. Development of IT makes easy to build a huge database on the Internet. We can compare doctors and choose suitable one much easier than previous period. That is why professionals like doctors and lawyers are in severe situation.

   Third article picked up by Nagao is about China’s population. As we know it, China has put up “One child policy” since 1979. This policy is successful in decreasing the population growth. However, the article shows that there are three surprising demographic problems China confronts now.

The first problem is dramatic aging of population. The ratio of over 60s increased to 13.3% in 2010 from 10.3% in 2000 while the ratio of younger generation below 14 is decreasing from 23% in 2000 to 17% in 2010. The second problem is an imbalance between male and female population. Parents especially in rural areas of China want to have a boy as their inheritor so the number of boys is larger than girls as a result of abortion and infanticide. As a result, 20% of males cannot get married in the future by an estimate. Third concern is about a penalty to get more children than two. Rich couples can pay for it easily and it enlarges a gap between rich and poor. We discussed about right or wrong of One-child Policy, effectiveness of population controls by governments and how to conquer aging population issues that Japan already confront.

   Final article is from Finance and Economics, picked up by Ono. It’s about mismatches of the length of funding of European banks that were suffered by the current economic crisis. Short funding looks much attractive compare with long one because of the difference in interest rates considering risk premium of long term funding. But the crisis gives us a lesson: Long term investment / lending by short term funding has a big risk. Regulators in Greeks or Spain may want to prevent another crisis by lengthening bank funding. But they are finding it much harder than they expected because of Basel III or Solvency II regulation. We shared ideas related with these issues and talked about the words from Mr. Edano about credit renunciation of banks.

   The place we gathered this week is a café in front of a main street of East side of Shinjuku. Yamagata was in a business trip to Swiss this weekend. Ono and I had a lunch in Lumine building. We chose Sushi bar at the top of the building. It was clean, simple and beautiful bar. Sushi Neta looked so delicious in a showcase in front of us. I decided to invite friends from abroad to a Sushi bar like there.