The report criticizes back-tracking on the earlier (Koizumi government) decision to privatize the Japan postal savings system.

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The main reason is that, fearful of the health of the banks, Japanese savers have increasingly been squirrelling money away in the (government-guaranteed) postal savings system instead.

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But the ideas that have leaked into the Japanese press suggest that the government intends to obtain funds mainly by borrowing from the state-run postal savings system, and to use them in two different ways.

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Ironically, the government's failure to restore public confidence in banks may be good news for its own postal savings system, which, as the world's biggest financial institution, controls about a third of the savings market and is badly in need of reform.

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