Credit Unions Japan

A rebellion in the Tokyo city assembly on Thursday sidetracked a national government plan to rescue two bankrupt credit unions and spurred a new threat to the coalition government of Socialist Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. Leaders of the opposition New Frontier Party demanded that Finance Minister Masayoshi Takemura--chief of the New Party Harbinger, one of three parties in the coalition--resign to accept responsibility for Tokyo's rejection of his credit union rescue plan.

Panicky depositors Wednesday helped trigger the first collapse of a Japanese commercial bank since shortly after World War II, part of a financial double-whammy that appeared to bring the nation's festering banking crisis to a head. The government announced that it will dissolve the bank, and it closed the country's second-largest credit union--and then declared that the worst is over because no other financial institutions are both as large and as weak as those two.

Panicky customers made a run on one of Japan's largest credit unions Monday, the first such incident here in half a century, triggering an emergency rescue that the government hoped would calm fears about broader trouble in the nation's banking system. Cosmos Credit Corp. was ordered Monday night to stop accepting new deposits and offering new loans after depositors withdrew more than $710 million in a single day. The sudden withdrawals followed news reports of the institution's near-collapse.

Panicky customers made a run on one of Japan's largest credit unions Monday, the first such incident here in half a century, triggering an emergency rescue that the government hoped would calm fears about broader trouble in the nation's banking system. Cosmos Credit Corp. was ordered Monday night to stop accepting new deposits and offering new loans after depositors withdrew more than $710 million in a single day. The sudden withdrawals followed news reports of the institution's near-collapse.

Panicky depositors Wednesday helped trigger the first collapse of a Japanese commercial bank since shortly after World War II, part of a financial double-whammy that appeared to bring the nation's festering banking crisis to a head. The government announced that it will dissolve the bank, and it closed the country's second-largest credit union--and then declared that the worst is over because no other financial institutions are both as large and as weak as those two.

A rebellion in the Tokyo city assembly on Thursday sidetracked a national government plan to rescue two bankrupt credit unions and spurred a new threat to the coalition government of Socialist Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama. Leaders of the opposition New Frontier Party demanded that Finance Minister Masayoshi Takemura--chief of the New Party Harbinger, one of three parties in the coalition--resign to accept responsibility for Tokyo's rejection of his credit union rescue plan.