Finance minister set to become Japan's PM

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his rival, powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, kicked off a leadership battle Wednesday that threatens to divide the ruling party only a year after it took power.Their contest to run the governing centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) comes as its economic recovery is slowing, Japan's debt mountain is growing and exports are threatened by the yen trading near a 15-year high.

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan and his rival, powerbroker Ichiro Ozawa, kicked off a leadership battle Wednesday that threatens to divide the ruling party only a year after it took power.Their contest to run the centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) and the nation comes as an economic recovery is sputtering, Japan's debt mountain is growing and exports are threatened by the yen trading at a 15-year high.

Japan's new finance minister said Friday that Tokyo would take action over the strong yen if needed, but added that in general markets should set currency levels."Basically, the market determines foreign exchange" rates, Naoto Kan said at a news conference.As finance minister, however, it was his duty "to take action on foreign exchange when necessary," he added.Kan's remarks came a day after he rattled markets with a call for a weaker yen, prompting a thinly veiled rebuke from Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who warned him not to publicly comment on currency levels.

Japan was expected to pass a 90.3 trillion yen ($1.1 trillion) budget on Thursday, with about half the spending financed by new bonds that will add to Japan's massive debt mountain.The country's ruling centre-left Democratic Party rammed the draft budget for the next fiscal year through the lower house of parliament earlier this month, over objections from opposition parties.The move means the huge spending plan would be approved even if the opposition-controlled upper house of parliament votes it down as expected.

Japan's new Prime Minister Naoto Kan made a final plea for votes Saturday during the last day of campaigning for upper house elections seen as a referendum on his party's 10 months in office.The Sunday vote will be the first national test at the ballot box for Kan since he took office last month, and for his centre-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) after it swept to power last August under a different leader.

Japan's Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama formally resigned along with his cabinet Friday, two days after declaring he would step down, ahead of a vote for his successor as party chief and premier.Finance Minister Naoto Kan, a deputy premier, was seen as the front runner to take over as prime minister of the world's second-largest economy, despite a late challenge for the post.If Friday's leadership vote follows expectations, Kan will take over from Hatoyama, who resigned Wednesday in the wake of a funding scandal and a damaging dispute over a US air base.

The Keynesian and Monetarist clowns in Japan are going all out in Japan with pledges to ignore debt caps and implement "bold monetary policy". Please consider Japan signals rise in borrowing. Japan’s new finance minister has signalled that the government will borrow to boost the struggling economy, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe unveiled a “crisis beating” cabinet on Wednesday.

Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan, weighed by low support ratings, is now "on the edge of a cliff" after his high-profile foreign minister quit over a funding scandal, newspapers said Monday."The Kan government faces its biggest crisis" since Kan took power in June last year as the second premier of his centre-left government, the liberal Mainichi Shimbun said in an editorial."They are in a crisis situation of whether the Kan government, or even the rule of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), will collapse," it said a day after Seiji Maehara stepped down.