Japanese PM plans $51b stimulus, puts election on hold

Japan's Prime Minister Taro Aso promised to pump 5 trillion yen ($51 billion) into the economy to help households and small businesses, and indicated he would delay elections until the global financial crisis subsides.

"We're facing a storm that comes once in every 100 years," Aso said in a televised speech in Tokyo yesterday. "The overwhelming majority of the public want policies and economic measures more than politics."

Japan's Finance Ministry on Wednesday cut its economic assessment in all of the nation's 11 regions for the first time in a decade amid the prospect of a global recession. Slumping growth in the world's second-largest economy has forced Aso to reconsider plans to call elections that would risk ending his party's more than 50-year grip on power.