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Dogs and DemonsA headline announces «Nippon Trust sells choice Kyoto site» or «Hokkaido Bank sells assets to write off loans,» and one might imagine that the banks were disposing of assets. However, in both cases the banks were selling to their own subsidiaries in tobashi transactions. The headlines should have read «Nippon Trust fails to sell choice Kyoto site» and «Hokkaido Bank finds no bona fide buyer to help it write off loans.» The National Land Agency accepts tobashi sales as real ones, which further distorts land-value statistics. Hence while the agency estimates that land prices have dropped in half from their peak, the results at actual auctions show that the fall is more than 80 percent. This is a classic example of an official statistic based on skewed data, but, unfortunately, we have even less to go by in estimating the true situation in most cases. Tobashi is only one of several techniques of funshoku kessan, «cosmetic accounting.» Another technique is, as we have seen, «book accounting,» whereby banks value their holdings at purchase value, although they may be worth much less today than what was paid for them ...» |
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