(Mt. Fuji of Japan, 60 miles far)Check Bureaucrats
Bureaucrats should be inquired of how much they have tried to prevent this global financial crisis.
Can you believe that none of bureaucrats in the Treasury Department and other offices of the U.S. Government could realize the coming disaster before September 2008?
Can you believe none of bureaucrats in the Treasury Department and other offices of the U.S. Government had any critical data and information related to the coming disaster before September 2008?
Anyway, let’s check the current state of the Treasury Departments or Ministries of major countries:
Country……Floor Area of Main Office……Number of Personnel
JAPAN…………58,984 m2……………………2,334
USA………………20,234 m2…………………(total 115,897)
UK…………………32,030 m2…………………1,060
GERMANY………41,028 m2…………………1,909
FRANCE…………230,000 m2………………9,219
(m2 = square meter = 10 sq. ft.
http://www.mof.go.jp/singikai/zaisanfollow_up/siryou/20080402/01.pdf )
With hundreds or thousands of officials in the main office, they could not correctly forecast and comprehend the magnitude of the coming financial disaster originated on Wall Street.
For example, a certain career civil servant of the Japanese Government wrote in his blog that he had been given precious advice by his boss after taking a meal and alcohol together in the evening:
"You have to maintain a good human relationship with staff of assessing agencies. Personal information about such officials you get in a drinking party or so must be shared by us as an organization and thus taken over by your successor. Accumulation of such relationships and information is critical for business in our department."
( http://www.seri.sakura.ne.jp/~branch/diary.shtml )
Mentality and conventions of Japanese elite bureaucrats can be inferred from the above episode of giving top priority to inter-ministerial business.
On the other hand, U.S. Treasury Department seems to face a challenge to recruit competent former-employees of Wall Street companies for supervising such financial institutes.
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Crisco’s Corner
Looking for a Job? Then the Department of Treasury
October 14, 2008
According to Govexec, the Department of Treasury is hiring up to 1000 people for the Office of Financial Stablity. The types of the people that are needed will be people with financial skills, auditors, and financial managers…
But bringing people up to speed is a separate issue. By some estimates, it takes five years to become a qualified bank examiner. Oversight of the bailout cannot wait that long, so the Office of Financial Stability will need to hire people from the private sector ready to take on huge responsibilities from day one…
One of the problems about the job is that Federal jobs is the pay limits. Here is an excerpt that describes the pay limits
“Federal pay constraints pose another obstacle. The maximum salary for an FDIC bank examiner was $160,910, according to a 2007 analysis by the Government Accountability Office. The highest pay for an SEC lawyer was $126,987. The pay cap for those in the senior executive service is $191,300. None of these salaries can compete with the remuneration available to the best and brightest on Wall Street.”
…
http://criscoscorner.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/looking-for-a-job-then-the-department-of-treasury/
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Of course, we need bureaucrats. But, they must not be organization-oriented or payoff-oriented, especially in this time of the critical global financial crisis.
Lastly, check how many government employees each major country has.
To our astonishment, Japan has lees public employees than in other major countries in terms of the number per 1000 citizens.
I don’t know what conclusion you may get from the above table, but the U.S. looks like controlled by a comparatively small number of employees of the Federal Government in Washington D.C. though it places a great deal of weight on the state, regional, and local level.
It is yet hard to say anything about the favorable state and the desirable relationship between the government and financial institutes like those on Wall Street
So far, I will just call your attention to bureaucrats who are regarded as hidden but focal parties involved in, or responsible for, this global financial crisis.
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That is all for today.
Copyright of my pictures belong to the God.
But, I think this blog EEE Reporter is Guinness-worthy as the blog written in English that has presented most pictures of scenes and scenery around Tokyo in a year.
Yet, you may like to take ones for the God, too, even if you do not run your own blog.
(O-Oh…)
Pro 11:4 Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death.
Pro 11:5 The righteousness of the perfect shall direct his way: but the wicked shall fall by his own wickedness.
Pro 11:6 The righteousness of the upright shall deliver them: but transgressors shall be taken in their own naughtiness.