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For top executives, ’tis the season to get paid in company stock - unless you happen to work at Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

The taxpayer-backed mortgage giants disclosed Thursday that they could pay out as much as $40 million to their top 10 executives for work in 2009.

The CEOs - Fannie’s (FNM, Fortune 500) Michael Williams and Freddie’s (FRE, Fortune 500) Charles Haldeman - are in line to receive as much as $6 million apiece, on an annualized basis (though both will get less this year because they took their jobs midway through the year).

That’s a nice chunk of change for running two companies that together lost $72 billion in the first nine months of 2009 and have received $112 billion in Treasury aid.

But what’s remarkable is that every penny Fannie and Freddie will pay out will be in cash - at a time when the White House is pressuring companies to pay more in stock, in the name of suppressing the bet-the-ranch mentality that helped pave the way for Wall Street’s 2008 collapse.

The government’s pay czar, Kenneth Feinberg, has cut cash payouts at taxpayer-backed companies like AIG (AIG, Fortune 500), Chrysler Financial and GMAC.

But his message has been heard everywhere, notably on Wall Street, where some big banks that have repaid Treasury loans have set plans to offer more compensation in stock.

"It’s amazing that the government is pushing companies with which it has no contractual standing to pay executives in stock, but isn’t doing the same with companies that it actually controls," said Len Blum, a managing director at investment bank Westwood Capital in New York.

For its part, the government agency that oversees Fannie and Freddie notes that this year’s payouts are 40% below the levels that obtained before the government takeover. Much of the money will be deferred over several years and some will be paid only if the companies hit certain targets.

Fannie adds that Treasury, which approved the payouts, prohibits it "from issuing common stock in connection with any new compensation arrangements without Treasury’s prior consent."

That stands in contrast to two of Fannie and Freddie’s big peers in the government-backed stable: insurer AIG and carmaker GM, which are now paying their executives mostly in stock.

AIG chief Robert Benmosche agreed in August to receive an annual salary of $7 million - $3 million in cash and $4 million in common stock. He won’t be able to sell the shares for five years. Benmosche also gets up to $3.5 million annually in stock-based incentive pay.

At GM, new finance chief Chris Liddell agreed this month to receive $750,000 annually in cash salary, $3.45 million in stock salary and $2 million in stock incentive pay.

Even at firms that have repaid their Troubled Asset Relief Program loans, the pay-in-stock message has sunk in.

Goldman Sachs (GS, Fortune 500) said this month it will pay its top executives’ bonuses in stock in 2009, a year in which the big trading firm is expected to set aside some $21 billion for employee pay.

"We believe our compensation policies are the strongest in our industry and … incentivize behavior that is in the public’s and our shareholders’ best interests," CEO Lloyd Blankfein said in a statement Dec. 10.

Of course, there are big differences between these companies and Fannie and Freddie.

Since September 2008, the government has been propping up Fannie and Freddie in the name of stabilizing the financial markets and ensuring that home mortgages remained available for Americans.

With their emphasis focusing from investor profits to supporting home prices, the firms’ financial results have collapsed. Fannie lost $58 billion in the first nine months of 2009 and Freddie $14 billion, as their share of the U.S. mortgage market soared near 90%.

The availability of Fannie-Freddie financing allows loans that "no one would normally make" to be extended, said Blum.

Shares of Fannie traded as high as $70 in August 2007, as the global credit bubble was getting ready to collapse. But in the past year, they have closed above $2 just once.

Even that is probably too high, Blum said, given the companies’ giant debt to taxpayers and the prospect of additional losses should this year’s recovery peter out.

Indeed, the giant paychecks also show little progress has been made in resolving the key conflict at the heart of these firms.

Given their obvious public policy function and their ballooning losses, it makes sense to simply take over Fannie and Freddie and make them into full-fledged government agencies, Blum said.

But in doing so, the government would have to wipe out the shareholders, foreclosing a possible sale of the firms back to the public. And it would have to start paying the firms’ workers on the federal pay scale - which would mean no more $6 million paydays for CEOs.

So as officials in Washington posture about the need to end too-big-to-fail and put the financial system on a sounder footing, action remains in short supply.

"These companies are never going to turn a profit again, but the government hasn’t come clean and wiped out the stock," said Blum. "After the crisis we have had, I don’t understand why we’re still allowing conflicts like this in our financial system." 

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The Federal Reserve is expected to leave interest rates at a record low this week. The big question is whether Chairman Ben Bernanke and his colleagues will hint about when they will reverse course and start boosting rates.

Plans for reeling in the unprecedented amount of money the Fed has plowed into the economy to bolster the recovery are likely to dominate discussions during the two-day meeting, which started on Tuesday afternoon. The Fed is expected to announce its policy decisions later today.

The central bank faces a high-stakes challenge: If it removes the stimulus too soon, it could short-circuit the fragile recovery. But if it moves too late, it could unleash inflation or new speculative asset bubbles.

A new report out Tuesday showed that wholesale prices shot up last month, but most economists think it will prove fleeting payday loan lenders.

Wholesale prices jumped 1.8 percent in November, lifted partly by more expensive energy products, the Labor Department said. That was up from a 0.3 percent gain in October and marked the largest one-month increase since August.

Stripping out energy and food, closely watched "core" prices rose 0.5 percent, the biggest increase in more than a year.

Meanwhile, the Fed reported that industrial production jumped 0.8 percent in November from October, the largest gain since August. Even with the stronger-than-expected showing, activity is still down 5.1 percent from a year ago, showing that the industrial sector is far from running at top speed.

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GMAC Financial Services, a lender that has received $12.5 billion in government bailouts, posted a third straight quarterly loss on Wednesday, hurt by red ink in its mortgage business.

The third-quarter net loss for Detroit-based GMAC totaled $767 million, compared with a loss of $2.5 billion a year earlier.

GMAC’s auto finance unit had a profit of $395 million in the quarter, while its mortgage operations posted a loss of $747 million.

The lender has struggled as the deteriorating auto and housing markets have caused financing volume to decline and credit losses to increase. GMAC’s owners include automaker General Motors GM.UL and the private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management LP CBS.UL.

(Reporting by Juan Lagorio; editing by John Wallace)

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China’s exports face a “hard and tortuous” path to recovery as uncertainties dog the global economy’s gradual return to health, with this year’s trade surplus set to shrink from last year’s record, the Commerce Ministry said.

Commerce Minister Chen Deming told a conference on Saturday that China’s trade surplus was expected to fall to $180 billion to $190 billion this year from last year’s record $295.5 billion.

The surplus was $136.4 billion in the first nine months of the year.

With China’s economic recovery relying heavily on government spending to boost domestic demand, imports have seen greater improvement than exports in recent months.

Exports in September were 15.2 percent below their level a year earlier, beating forecasts of a 21 percent fall, although the government expects a double-digit fall for all of 2009.

In a statement released late on Friday on the ministry’s website (www.mofcom.gov.cn), it said the full-year fall in exports compared with the previous year should be less than 20 percent.

“In 2010, the world economy will hopefully see a gradual recovery, and the environment for Chinese trade will gradually improve,” it said.

“But as there is not yet sufficient strength in the global economic recovery, many problems and contradictions have yet to be basically resolved. The recovery will be hard and tortuous, and it will be hard to see an obvious recovery in international demand in the short term default payday loan.”

Net exports shaved 3.6 percentage points off headline GDP growth of 8.9 percent in the third quarter as Chinese manufacturers continued to reel from a slump in global trade.

Protectionism in these straightened times was a particular worry, as was increasing competition, the ministry said.

“At present some nations are conducting probes into Chinese goods, which is causing yet further obstruction for a recovery in Chinese exports,” it said.

A U.S. trade panel on Friday approved the eighth government investigation this year into charges of unfair Chinese pricing practices in a case in which U.S. companies want a nearly 100 percent duty or more on $382 million of imported steel pipes.

Still, there were signs for optimism, the ministry added.

The government was continuing to provide help to exporters in the form of export tax rebates, and numerous new markets awaited Chinese firms.

“There is a bright future for developing trade with newly emerging markets,” it said.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard in Beijing and Fang Yan in Shanghai; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Bank of Japan Deputy Governor Kiyohiko Nishimura said financial markets are improving and keeping the central bank’s emergency credit programs in place for too long may cause distortions.

“Excessive concerns are easing considerably and market functions are improving significantly,” Nishimura said at a press conference today in Kobe, western Japan. “Prolonging safety-net measures may cause the problem of moral hazard.”

Earlier in a speech, Nishimura stressed that ending the programs of buying corporate debt from lenders is a separate matter to interest-rate policy. Economists expect the central bank to end the credit steps by the end of the year, while leaving the benchmark rate at 0.1 percent through all of 2010 amid prolonged deflation and tepid economic growth.

“The central bank wants to make it clear that ending some measures doesn’t mean raising rates soon,” said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in Tokyo. Adachi predicts the corporate asset-purchase programs will expire in December as scheduled and the BOJ will “be one of the last central banks to raise interest rates.”

Nishimura, 56, said policy makers will decide the fate of the credit measures “after determining the extent to which market functions recover and whether excessive concerns among investors will return.” The bank will make an assessment by looking at the financial market “overall,” rather than the market for specific securities.

Easier to Sell

In the speech, he said companies with higher credit ratings are finding it easier to sell bonds and commercial paper payday loans no fax. Since lowering the key interest rate to 0.1 percent in December, the bank has been buying the assets and offering banks unlimited loans backed by collateral to channel funds to companies. The three programs are due to expire on Dec. 31.

Japan’s “road to recovery will be very bumpy,” the deputy governor said at the news briefing, while adding that stimulus from governments and central banks worldwide will ensure it avoids a “double-dip” slump. In the speech he said it will take “a while” before consumer prices stop falling and return to a “desirable” level.

“It’s all too true that deflation is already putting some pressure on Japan’s economy by squeezing corporate profits and wages,” said Yoshimasa Maruyama, senior economist at Itochu Corp. in Tokyo. “The Bank of Japan is very far from raising rates.”

Consumer prices excluding fresh food slid a record 2.4 percent in August from a year earlier. The central bank is likely to forecast price declines will extend to 2011 when they release their twice-annual economic outlook on Oct. 30, analysts say.

The central bank will probably hold interest rates near zero at least through the end of 2010, according to 16 of 17 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News this month.

Nishimura said the policy board will continue to focus on the risks to growth, and uncertainty over the global economic outlook is the biggest concern.

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A new battle is brewing in Congress, riding the same populist wave that pitted banks against consumers on credit card fees earlier this year.

Momentum is gaining behind a proposed crack down on overdraft fees — the big penalties banks charge when customers spend more than they have in their accounts.

More than 75% of banks automatically sign customers up for overdraft programs, according to a study by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

One of the big complaints is that many consumers only discover they have overdraft protection when they check their bank statement. Then it’s too late. Suddenly a $3 latte costs an extra $35.

"It’s extremely frustrating," said Phyllis Blanton, who lives near Wichita, Kan.

Blanton said she recently had to straighten out some $150 in overdraft fees at her local bank, accidentally incurred by her 20-year-old daughter, a college student. "I know the banks are getting stricter and more creative in the ways they’re making money, but they’re really just socking it to you," she said.

On Capitol Hill, lawmakers are working on bills that would force banks to curb and better disclose those fees. FDIC chief Sheila Bair has lately become a more vocal critic of overdraft fees, calling them "usurious" during a speech last month.

Separately, the Federal Reserve is working on new rules, which could be ready by year’s end, to prevent banks from automatically enrolling customers in overdraft protection programs without their knowledge.

Increased criticism on overdraft fees has coincided with a move by banks to voluntarily cut back and change the way they charge overdraft fees.

Some banks are eliminating fees on customers who dip below their balance by a mere $5 or $10. Others plan to cap the number of overdrafts that can be racked up in a day.

Bank of America (BAC, Fortune 500), for example, will on Oct. 19 start charging customers no more than four overdraft fees daily. The current cap is 10.

JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500) will start processing and clearing expenses in the order purchases were made, chronologically, instead of biggest to smallest, which can deplete bank accounts faster and lead to more fees.

Consumer advocates say the push in Washington to do something about overdraft fees prompted banks to make changes.

"They clearly know something is coming," said Melissa Koide of the New America Foundation, a left-leaning Washington policy group. "It’s a very big populist issue so these big banks and the regional ones are reacting in anticipation, and that isn’t a bad thing."

Banks say they’re just responding to customer demands and market forces. Other banks that recently announced changes include: BB&T (BBT, Fortune 500), City National (CYN), Fifth-Third Bancorp (FITB, Fortune 500), PNC (PNC, Fortune 500), Regions Financial (RF, Fortune 500), Toronto-Dominion (TD), U.S. Bancorp (USB, Fortune 500) and Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500).

The American Bankers Association says the industry is taking action for a small pool of customers, since most don’t pay overdraft fees. A September ABA survey found that 17% of customers said they paid an overdraft fee in the previous 12 months and those that did said they were glad the transaction was covered.

"During tough economic times, when people have tapped all their other sources of credit, when they have to pay for gas or groceries, they really need that payment to go through," ABA spokeswoman Carol Kaplan said.

Big money

For banks, overdraft fees are a big revenue generator because so many people rely on debit cards. Some 75 out of 100 financial transactions are electronic, according to Moebs Services Inc., an economic research firm.

The financial services industry is on track to make $38.5 billion this year on overdraft and non-sufficient fund fees, up 38% from $27 cash advances pay day loan.9 billion five years ago, Moebs estimates.

A Center for Responsible Lending study released on Tuesday showed that overdraft fee income grew for banks and credit unions by 35% just between 2006 and 2008.

Mike Moebs, who owns Moebs Services, said the changes that banks have made so far will help consumers, but "we need a second step. … We need to reduce the price of overdraft fees."

That’s where the debate on Capitol Hill could get messy.

Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., has introduced a bill that would require all banks to allow customers to agree to participate in overdraft protection.

The bill would also force banks to tell customers when an account is on the verge of being overdrawn, so customers can make a decision whether a particular purchase is worth an overdraft fee. The legislation would also force banks to clear transactions chronologically, instead of biggest first.

Finally, Maloney’s bill would force banks to make sure customers’ account balances reflect what they actually have available. Some banks show an available balance reflecting both the customer’s actual balance plus what’s available through overdraft protection, giving a distorted view of what’s available for purchases without fees.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd, D-Conn., is drafting a bill that consumer advocates and congressional staffers predict will be even more aggressive. It could cap fees and the number of times fees can be charged daily. It could require banks to alert customers to their available balances each day.

But financial industry lobbyists say congressional action isn’t needed. They argue that the industry’s moves have already started trickling through the entire banking system to regional banks.

"Competition and customer concerns about overdraft fees forced the industry to respond — that’s the way it should work," said Scott Talbott, chief lobbyist for the Financial Roundtable, a banking industry group.

Veteran Hill watchers say they expect Congress to address overdraft fees — and definitely before the 2010 elections next fall.

Current legislation is stuck behind bigger, more-pressing priorities.

Maloney’s bill has yet to be considered by the House Financial Services Committee, which is slammed with hearings on overall financial regulatory reform. In the Senate, bogged down by health care reform, Dodd’s bill is expected to be released in coming weeks.

That’s not soon enough for bank customers like Phyllis Blanton, the Kansan who said she recently got buried in fees.

A tanning salon accidentally charged her daughter Ashley $70 instead of $7. The transaction was immediately voided but Phyllis’ account, which is linked to Ashley’s, had become overdrawn.

The bank, Intrust Bank, didn’t clear the voided transaction for a few days, so her daughter’s account remained overdrawn. Her daughter went on to rack up fees on a $2.50 McDonald’s Happy Meal and a $3 purchase of school supplies at Wal-Mart.

Total fees: $150 from five different transactions over two hours.

"This is a way for them to trip people up and to be able to hold onto their money," said Phyllis Blanton, who was able to convince her bank of 30 years to drop three of the five overdraft charges.

An Intrust spokeswoman declined to comment on the specific case. She said the bank, before reimbursing customers, typically requires merchants to write a letter explaining voided purchases.

For Blanton, the headache was enough to make her consider shopping for a new bank. "They used to let these things slide, but they don’t anymore," she said. 

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Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said the Obama administration’s best hope to reduce the budget deficit is to focus on reviving the economy while maintaining discipline in budgeting.

“The most important thing is to have honest accounting and real discipline in the way you spend or cut taxes,” Clinton, 63, said in an interview today with Bloomberg Radio. “If you’re going to expend revenues or reduce them coming in, you have to replace them.”

Clinton endorsed Obama’s call for “pay-as-you-go” budget rules that would require that future spending increases or tax cuts be paid for with revenue increases. Still, he said progress on the budget deficit would mostly turn on the success of Obama’s economic strategy.

“The better the economy is, the quicker you’ll balance the budget,” Clinton said. “But anyone that says that they know how quickly they can do it with precision is not being entirely candid because part of it depends on factors beyond your control.”

The federal budget deficit will total $1.6 trillion this year as revenue falls and the government spends at the fastest pace in 57 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last month guaranteed unsecured personal loan.

The gap will be equal to 11.2 percent of the economy, the biggest since World War II. The shortfall is largely attributable to the financial crisis, which has reduced tax revenue even as the government increased spending on stimulus programs and bailouts for financial companies and automakers, the CBO said.

Dollar Weakness

Investor concern about the deficit, which has grown from $455 billion in 2008, has contributed to the weakness of the dollar. The trade-weighted dollar index has fallen 12 percent since Obama’s inauguration in January. The index measures the currency’s performance against the euro, yen, pound, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc and Swedish krona.

Under Clinton, the budget balance swung to a surplus of $236 billion in 2000, his last full year in office, from a deficit of $290 billion deficit in 1992 during the final year of the George H.W. Bush presidency. The dollar index rose 21 percent in the Clinton years.

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Mickey Mouse’s house and his Toon Town world will make way next year for a vastly larger Fantasyland, in the biggest-ever expansion of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Florida, Walt Disney Co said on Saturday.

The Fantasyland expansion, whose price tag was not disclosed, will open in two stages in 2012 and 2013 and builds on the popularity of the Disney Princess and Fairies franchises, which have topped $4 billion in global retail sales.

Disney theme parks Chairman Jay Rasulo said the Fantasyland project, which breaks ground next year, will be paid for from funds designated for the theme park division’s annual capital expenditures.

Plans call for four Disney Princess characters — Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Belle from “Beauty and the Beast” and Ariel from “The Little Mermaid” — to be featured in “fantasy lands” where park visitors engage in dancing, storytelling or a birthday party with costumed characters from the films.

The expansion includes two new dining spots — Gascon’s Tavern and the 552-seat Beast’s Castle. A new underwater ride based on “The Little Mermaid, will be built both in the Florida Fantasyland and at the ongoing expansion of California Adventure in Disneyland.

The second phase of the Fantasyland expansion will be an oversized world based on the fairy world of Pixie Hollow from “Peter Pan,” but no other details were available because the attraction was still in early development stages, Rasulo said.

As part of the Fantasyland expansion, Disney plans to double the size of the popular Dumbo ride to add a covered “three-ring circus” waiting area with interactive games and a play area.

Disney Imagineers, who design rides and attractions, said the Toon Town attraction would be dismantled and its popular Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse houses relocated to another section of Walt Disney World.

Rasulo also announced an upgrade to the Star Tours rides at Disneyland in Anaheim and Disney’s Hollywood Studio in Florida to open in 2011.

Star Tours simulates a ride through space aboard spacecraft like those in the original “Star Wars” film.

The updated version features new digital 3D effects and projectors that let ride operators vary “destinations,” as well as upgrades to the Star Speeder cabins, Rasulo said.

(Editing by Peter Cooney)

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China must lower trade barriers and do more to protect intellectual-property rights or risk losing foreign investment, European Union Trade Commissioner Catherine Ashton said.

“With global competition for the best investment rising, governments should be seeking to attract not restrict investment,” Ashton said today at an investment fair in Xiamen, China. “Barriers in China not only cost European business, but also deprive the Chinese economy of investment inflows and significant tax revenues.”

A number of what Ashton called “warning signs” have emerged, signaling that China and EU are growing skeptical about investing in each other. EU investment in the world’s fastest- growing major economy dropped to 4.5 billion euros ($6.5 billion) last year from 7.1 billion euros in 2007, while Chinese investment in Europe fell by half a billion euros.

While part of the decline stems from the impact of the global financial crisis on capital markets, “this is not the whole story,” Ashton said. “Foreign direct investment should not be curtailed by equity caps, unnecessary joint-venture obligations or restrictions in sectors considered strategic.”

EU-China ties have soured in recent years amid growing European criticism of China’s human-rights record and its failure to crack down on counterfeiting, plus a rash of trade spats. While China is the 27-nation EU’s second-largest trading partner, the Asian nation is attracting “much less” foreign direct investment from Europe than other emerging economies such as India, Brazil and Russia, Ashton said paydayloans.

Ownership Caps

China is backsliding on reforms to open its economy to foreign business, which are impeded by a lack of legal and political transparency and violations of intellectual-property rights, the EU Chamber of Commerce in China said last week. Forced joint ventures and ownership caps are making China less appealing as an investment destination for many European companies, the chamber said.

Europe’s carmakers, for instance, can’t establish their own manufacturing facilities in China and must operate via 50-50 joint ventures, it said. And local governments are required to buy Chinese products for projects under China’s 4 trillion-yuan ($585 billion) stimulus plan.

“Protection of intellectual property, especially patents, is also crucial if more companies are to bring their ideas and their technology to China,” Ashton said. “Without the promise of protection for their innovations, European companies are sometimes hesitant to invest here. It is therefore very encouraging that the Chinese leadership sees the necessity of a well-enforced IPR system as a stepping-stone to future economic development.”

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on June 25 that the nation didn’t discriminate against foreign enterprises or products.

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Japan’s new top currency official said the government would consider stepping into the foreign- exchange market only if abrupt yen moves hurt the economy.

“We’ll make judgments based on whether excessive movements in the currency market will adversely affect the economy,” Rintaro Tamaki, who this week replaced Naoyuki Shinohara as vice finance minister for international affairs, said in a group interview in Tokyo today.

The yen gained against all 16 of the world’s major currencies in the past year, and has surged 3 percent against the dollar this month, making exporters’ products less competitive while lowering import costs. Japan last stepped into the foreign-exchange market to sell yen in 2004.

“Japanese authorities may be saying that excessive yen strength is undesirable, given the present level of the yen,” said Masanobu Ishikawa, general manager of foreign exchange at Tokyo Forex & Ueda Harlow Ltd., Japan’s largest currency trader. “The speed of such a move would likely be a problem for them.”

Tamaki affirmed the view held by the Group of Seven nations that excessive currency moves are undesirable, while adding that the G-7’s stance is “based on the view that the market decides foreign exchange rates.”

The yen rose to 93.64 per dollar at 5:33 p.m. in Tokyo from 93.93 late yesterday in New York.

Never Say Never

“I won’t comment on whether we’ll intervene in the market or not, but if you were to ask me if we’d never intervene, the answer would be no,” Tamaki said.

Tamaki, 55, said Japan will keep supporting the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and there’s no plan to change a policy of investing mainly in U.S. Treasuries, echoing remarks made by Yasutake Tango, the new vice finance minister, in an interview last week cash advance.

Their stance contrasts with that of Masaharu Nakagawa, the shadow finance minister in the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, which leads in polls ahead of elections next month. He said in an interview last week that the nation should consider shifting its foreign reserves away from the dollar.

Japanese investors are the biggest foreign holders of Treasuries after China with $677.2 billion of the securities in May. Japan’s total foreign reserves total $1.02 trillion.

“Japan’s foreign reserves are for the stabilization of the foreign exchange market,” Tamaki said. “Liquidity and safety is the most important factor when we manage the foreign reserves.”

Record Sales

Japan hasn’t entered into the foreign-exchange market since the central bank, at the request of the Finance Ministry, sold a record 14.8 trillion yen ($158 billion) in the first quarter of 2004 in an effort to weaken the currency.

The G-7 said in April that “excess volatility and disorderly movements in exchange rates have adverse implications for economic and financial stability.”

Tamaki, who served under Shinohara as the head of the ministry’s international affairs department, said the global economy remains in a severe state.

Tamaki worked at the Japanese embassy in Washington from 2002 to 2005. He’s a certified wine adviser and likes classical music and opera.

Some lawmakers at the opposition DPJ grilled Tamaki in parliament on how he handled former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa’s misbehavior at a G-7 press conference in Italy in February. Nakagawa resigned after being criticized for appearing drowsy and slurring his speech at a news conference following the meeting.

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