With ¥331 trillion $2.9 trillionn) in savings deposits and life-insurance assets, the country's "post office" has long allowed politicians to raise funds for favoured projects while hiding the true costs from taxpayers.
Unlike the website Kickstarter, which asks fans to donate money in the hope of seeing favoured projects hit the big screen, the film investment company Junction will feature movies that do not require extra financing to get the green light.
Although drama on Channel 4 and BBC2 is frequently starved of investment, BBC1 and ITV1 spray so much money on to their favoured projects that they can end up almost matching American standards of gloss.
But, as in Japan, there is then a risk that money is channelled into politically favoured projects with low returns.In a serious bout of deflation, a central bank acting alone may fail to halt deflation, but if a central bank and government act jointly they will surely succeed.
The state banks have almost no experience in assessing credit, and local Communist Party officials consider it part of their job to direct state-banking money to favoured projects.Sorting out China's banking mess is a race against time, and the government is moving too slowly.
Even elimination of the notorious "earmarks", favoured projects slid into the federal budget by individual congressmen, would save little; they add up to less than $20 billion a year, and in any case they only rearrange, rather than expand, the budget.Taxation's mazeThe measures outlined above could generate perhaps half the savings needed to get the deficit down to 3% of GDP (see table).
Finally, some of the politicians now backing Mrs Arroyo have merely lost their love for Mr Estrada not for the pork products that he serves up so freely.Nevertheless, a president enjoys enormous powers in the Philippines, including both a line-item veto and an ability to reallocate funds to favoured projects.
There was a lovely moment where badass majority whip Jackie Sharp, who has been tasked with securing the Democratic vote on the entitlements amendment while Frank Underwood was yucking it up at some Civil war re-enactnment and making deals with Chinese billionaire sex perverts, rounded on two Congressman who expected her to bankroll their favoured projects in order to secure their allegiance.
If you set up a supply of "free" money and give committees of the "great and good" a licence to spend it on favoured projects, a lot of it is bound to be wasted.But it would be a shame if the failure of the Dome, and even of a few other lottery-backed schemes, were completely to discredit the current splurge of public spending on the arts, heritage and sport.
