International -- Readers Report
The Hurdles That Japan's New Prime Minister Faces
Junichiro Koizumi may have a genuine chance to make substantive changes quickly ("Japan's reformer," Cover Story, May 7) because the Liberal Democratic Party can't afford to give him the heave-ho. A cynic might conclude that the rust-encrusted party would rather defend its traditional perquisites than give the reformer the opportunity to do his job. But realpolitik may prove stronger with the winners: the Prime Minister, the LDP, and most important, Japan.
Michael G. Driver
Ichihara City, Japan
The real threat to Koizumi's political venture is a school of "liberals" in Japan. Koizumi claims to be--and is--a patriot by nature, and this is irritating to the liberal. If the Liberal Democratic Party's anti-Koizumi faction makes use of them to achieve its own interest, collaborating with the mass media, Koizumi's reform plan has no chance and is thus doomed to fail.
Yasunobu Nakajima
Tokyo
I agree with "A mandate for change in Japan" (Editorials, May 7). It really is a soft revolution, if we take Koizumi's reform agenda at face value and if the new administration can swiftly implement all the reform measures without making concessions to the LDP's Old Guard. Japanese voters, fed up with empty promises of successive LDP governments, welcome Koizumi's initiative but still are a bit skeptical about whether he will be able to tackle all the problems singlehandedly. Koizumi was not elected Prime Minister by popular vote, but by the majority of MPs belonging to the LDP. Eventually, reformers risk being forced to compromise to LDP bigwigs. Also, reformers will face fierce resistance from bureaucrats who seek to preserve their alliances with LDP factions.
Hideki Kitamura
Nishinomiya, Japan
Stability Is the IMF's Goal in Indonesia
I must take exception to "The IMF should quit playing politics" (International Business, May 7). It is incorrect to see failure in Indonesia. In 1999-2000, macroeconomic stability was restored, the threat of hyperinflation firmly averted, food security assured, and foreign exchange reserves rebuilt. Moreover, important steps were taken to recapitalize the banking system. The current dialogue with the Indonesian authorities has focused on how best to sustain the recovery and to build upon it.
The International Monetary Fund has acknowledged that its programs have attempted to accomplish too much too quickly. That is why the fund and its 183 members are moving to streamline the approach to conditionality. Indeed, stability is the whole point of recent fund-supported programs, which your reporters deride.
One key challenge in many crisis-stricken countries is the need to bring government spending under control to help rebuild market confidence. In this context, addressing the problems of bloated or money-losing government programs is relevant to the process of restoring macroeconomic stability.
Thomas C. Dawson
Director
External Relations Dept.
International Monetary Fund
Washington
Royal Treatment for a British Lottery Winner
I once won $1,000 in Illinois that took six weeks for payment--and that is normal ("State lotteries are coming up snake eyes," American News, May 7). The world's most successful lottery, in England, sends a limo within 48 hours to take major winners to collect their checks.
Dan Slater
Hove, England
Taking a Closer Look at Nuclear Power's Comeback
"A comeback for nukes" (American News, Apr. 23) is timely. However, the real development necessary to have a long-range nuclear program is to build breeder reactors. Uranium 235 is the isotope that fissions, but it is an extremely small part of natural uranium; only 7 atoms in 1,000. The rest is uranium 238. A breeder reactor would convert uranium 238 to plutonium that we could burn. So a breeder reactor would burn nearly all the uranium. If we just burn uranium 235, our nuclear fuel will run out in about 100 years. If we convert uranium 238 to plutonium in breeder reactors, we can extend the life of the nuclear industry to 10,000 years or more.
Volney C. Wilson
Sister Bay, Wis.
Editor's note: In 1942, the writer directed the instrument group at the University of Chicago that designed and built the neutron detectors and the control and safety devices for the first chain reaction, supervised by Enrico Fermi.
"A comeback for nukes?" shows a pair of cooling towers glowing in the dark. It would make the article more accurate, for us engineers at least, if you showed a reactor dome instead. Cooling towers, though ominous looking, are a quite conventional technology that allows us to use the atmosphere as a heat sink. There is no nuclear technology involved in them at all. In fact, many nuclear power stations that use rivers or lakes as heat sinks do not have such cooling towers, and gas- or coal-fired stations may actually use them, too.
Jorge Lepre
Hastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Remembrance of Things Past at Amazon.com
In "The company is not the stock" (Information Technology, Apr. 30), Jeffery P. Bezos of Amazon.com Inc. was asked: "Did you originally think of Amazon as just selling books?" Mr. Bezos replied: "It really was just books."
In my (unauthorized) book Amazon.com: Get Big Fast, I quote Nicholas Lovejoy, Amazon.com's employee No. 5, who related a 1995 conversation with Bezos: "Books were always a prelude to other things. At that time, I was doing quite a bit of kayaking. [Jeff] would say, `In the future, when you come to Amazon.com, I don't want you just to be able to search for "kayak" and find all the books on kayaking....There should be everything to do with kayaking, and the same is true for anything.' That amazing vision was there then. No doubt about it; books were just a starting point."
I'm a great admirer of Bezos, but he continues to proffer this fiction.
Robert Spector
Seattle
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