Erection? What Erection?

Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his Liberal Democratic Party won a huge victory in today's snap elections, winning a majority in Japan's lower house of parliament for the first time since 1990.

This is good news for Japan and the world. The major issue at stake in the election was Koizumi's policy of privatizing Japan's post office financial network, which is effectively one of the world's larges (and most poorly run) financial institutions. For years, Japan's politicians have used the Post Office's more than $3 trillion dollars in assets as a politically controlled slush fund to buy government bonds and invest in insolvent state owned and controlled financial institutions. (Yes, that was TRILLIONS, as in thousands of billions of dollars.) If the Japanese Post Office is privatized, managers interested in making sound investments, rather than politicians, will control this huge chunk of capital. This is a big deal.