Previous efforts to reform the pension fund have been quashed by Japan's Jurassic bureaucracy, as was an earlier attempt to create a sovereign-wealth fund using foreign-exchange reserves.
Further confirmation that the U.S. dollar is gradually losing its reserve status came today from an International Monetary Fund report on global holdings of foreignexchange reserves by central banks.
This covers a host of businesses that provide steady income and are not too capital-intensive, such as corporate cash management, foreignexchange, trade finance, global custody and hedge-fund administration.
One reason China is setting up its sovereign wealth fund now is that huge trade surpluses and a vast reserve of foreignexchange mean it simply has too much cash to absorb into its own economy, and capital controls keep it from investing in liquid assets like American T-bills.