Privatization of the Post Office...soon.

[Dover]

This is a trial balloon for the privatization freaks in the U.S. (both parties). You'd better begin thinking about your OWN privacy if this comes to the U.S. (as I'm sure it will).

Privatization of Japan's postal colossus sparks competition fears

By Hans Greimel
AP, TOKYO
Saturday, Mar 31, 2007, Page 9

The privatization of Japan's post office, which doubles as the world's biggest savings bank, was hailed around the globe as a watershed free-market reform that would streamline the world's No. 2 economy.

But just months before the October start date, a darker prospect looms over what will unseat Citigroup Inc as the world's biggest financial institution. Far from encouraging open competition, some are warning that the government-nurtured colossus could leverage its size to stamp out rivals, foreign and domestic.

Washington is pressuring Tokyo to ensure that won't happen, and Japan is promising strict safeguards. Yet uncertainties about how the 10-year privatization plan will unfold are fueling fears of a new US-Japan trade row.

"We are monitoring it very closely," US Trade Representative Susan Schwab told US Congress last month.

Japan's postal privatization "is fine in theory, unless it turns out they are creating an unfair advantage, an unlevel playing field," Schwab warned. "We will, if necessary, seek litigation."

Japan Post does more than sell stamps and deliver letters. It also runs a postal savings bank with 500 million accounts and some 4,000 branch offices nationwide. Its ubiquitous post offices effectively act as sales agents for insurance and investment products as well as stamps. Japan Post started selling investment trusts at just 551 post offices in 2005, but had expanded that to 1,155 branches by last October...>

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2007/03/31/2003354703

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There have already been concerted efforts to 'smear' the U.S. postal service. I can remember a period of time when there was suddenly a media blitz of negative press about all kinds inefficiencies, problems, ineptitudes and fear(remember the anthrax?)directed at the Post Office, being reported with a decidedly 'swiftboatesque' flavor to them. It's a technique we are all becoming familiar with...

[Vexatious Ape]

1. I've never had a problem with the our postal service, never.

I know there political philosophy is to privatize every damn thing, but I think a lot of Right Wingers really hate that fact that Postal workers actually make a decent living.

[Dover]

2. I love my mail carrier and also have never had any problem.

But their performance has nothing to do with the real motives behind a movement toward privatization.

[partylessinOhio]

3. Halliburton should never gain control of the USPS. We should demand

that Congress keep their hands out of the US Postal Service. No matter what the cost we need to keep it as is.

[Auggie]

6. And that's exactly who would get it too.

[jmowreader]

4. You know there's a big problem with privatizing it

Private companies all across America drool at the opportunity to snag the USPS's premium postal product lines, such as Express Mail.

No one except the quasigovernmental agency called the US Postal Service wants to even think about the logistics of hauling letters from Florida to Alaska for 39 cents apiece.

[Jim Warren]

5. Exactly

Been the whole idea since the penny post way back when.

If privatized, look to pay a buck to get a letter brought across town.

[jmowreader]

7. True dat

This according to the MBA's Sacred Belief that EVERY function in an enterprise has to show a profit.

First Class Mail doesn't show a profit. Never has, and never will.

In the Old Days when it was called the Post Office, First Class Mail was carried as a national security imperative--communication is vital to any nation.

Now they subsidize it through bulk mail, selling stamps to collectors and the float on postage that's intended to be used.

Let the MBAs at the Postal Service, and they'd quickly discern that First Class Mail needed to be either eliminated or the price raised so it would show a profit.

[alfredo]

8. The privatization move was put into high gear during the Reagan years

and many of the true believers are now in the bush junta.

[Dover]

10. I think there are many Democrats in that junta as well...n/t

[alfredo]

11. I'm sure those who lobby for the postal workers have them

on speed dial.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

9. They are also trying to privatize air traffic control.

And that's truly scary. A profit-driven business whose function is supposed to be safety? Be very afraid.