(History of the Pacific Rim - Japan) - Pension Problems
Japan admits to lost pension mess
The most important news coming out of Japan this week is this mess over pension plans. The government claims that nearly 50 million Japanese people will have to check whether or not their pension information was accurate. Apparently, in about 20 million pensions, no one can identify who owns what. In a population of only 127.7 million, that's a terribly significant amount. I'm honestly curious what could have caused so massive an error. I want to think that there might have been a glitch in the systems they used to store the information, but I'm willing to bet there might have been some administrative errors in the process, as well. The Japanese people are rather furious about the problem. This might also affect the position of Prime Minister Fukuda, as confidence in his government is not particularly strong at the moment. I'm curious to see if this build up of scandals and mistakes will lead Fukuda to follow the footsteps of his predecessor, Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, and resign. Perhaps he'll try to wade through it all. Only time will tell.