Money and Finance
- Today's Market Indicator
Monday, 22 October 2012 TimeCountryMacroeconomic IndicesPeriodPrevious ReadingForecastActual ReadingImportance00:50Merchandise Trade ImportsSep-5.4% y/y2.9% y/y4.1% y/yReflects changes in the volume of imported goods in comparison to the...
- John Mauldin: Central Bankers Gone Wild
When Jonathan Tepper and I wrote Endgame some two years ago, the focus was on Europe, but we clearly detailed how Japan would be the true source of global volatility and instability in just a few years. “A Bug in Search of a Windshield” was the title...
- A New Year, But Some Old Issues – By Bill Bishop
Last week’s column concluded with the comment that a resolution to the Chinese-Japanese dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands seemed far away despite hopeful talk about the possibility of a summit meeting between Xi Jinping of China and Shinzo Abe...
- Doom Heralded At Hayman By Widening Trade Deficit: Japan Credit
Thanks to Will for passing this along. Going back and reviewing an investor letterfrom Kyle Bass dated November 30, 2011, Bass wrote “We believe that Japan would have a bond crisis of its own within the next two years without the current European debt...
- Look To The East For Cheap Yield – By Merryn Somerset Webb
This brings me to one of my favourite long-term investments – what many readers insist is my “blind spot” and a market that no one has used the word “bubble” to describe for over two decades. I’m talking about Japan, of course (full disclosure:...
Money and Finance
Three Reasons Japan’s Economic Pain Is Getting Worse – By Jared Diamond
Japan’s economic problems are serious and getting worse. Foremost among them is the crushing burden of government debt.
Japan’s ratio of government debt to gross domestic product, currently about 2.28, is by far the highest in the industrial world, almost double that of even Greece and Italy, and steadily growing. Already, the combined costs of interest on that debt and social security are approximately equal to total government tax revenue.
Japan’s trade balance is about to go negative for the first time since 1980. Land values and Nikkei stock values have fallen to about 30 percent of 1989 levels. Now, educated young Japanese women are emigrating, Japanese companies are shifting production overseas (even to the U.S.), national politics are in gridlock (six prime ministers in the past five years), and last year Japan experienced its first mass street protests in decades.
The economic troubles are symptoms of at least three sets of deeper social problems. Regardless of what policies Japan now adopts, its troubles can only increase unless those social problems are solved. While all three of these also beset other industrial societies, certain local attitudes make them more severe in Japan.
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To an outside admirer of Japan like me, its opposition to sustainable resource use seems sad and self-destructive. Unrealistic quests for resources drove the country to self- destructive behavior once before, when it made war simultaneously on China, the U.S., the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. Defeat today is as inevitable as it was then -- this time, not by military conquest, but by exhaustion of both renewable and nonrenewable natural resources. If I were the evil dictator of another country who hated Japan and wanted to ruin it without resort to war, I would do exactly what Japan is now doing to itself: destroy the overseas resource bases on which it depends.
- Today's Market Indicator
Monday, 22 October 2012 TimeCountryMacroeconomic IndicesPeriodPrevious ReadingForecastActual ReadingImportance00:50Merchandise Trade ImportsSep-5.4% y/y2.9% y/y4.1% y/yReflects changes in the volume of imported goods in comparison to the...
- John Mauldin: Central Bankers Gone Wild
When Jonathan Tepper and I wrote Endgame some two years ago, the focus was on Europe, but we clearly detailed how Japan would be the true source of global volatility and instability in just a few years. “A Bug in Search of a Windshield” was the title...
- A New Year, But Some Old Issues – By Bill Bishop
Last week’s column concluded with the comment that a resolution to the Chinese-Japanese dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands seemed far away despite hopeful talk about the possibility of a summit meeting between Xi Jinping of China and Shinzo Abe...
- Doom Heralded At Hayman By Widening Trade Deficit: Japan Credit
Thanks to Will for passing this along. Going back and reviewing an investor letterfrom Kyle Bass dated November 30, 2011, Bass wrote “We believe that Japan would have a bond crisis of its own within the next two years without the current European debt...
- Look To The East For Cheap Yield – By Merryn Somerset Webb
This brings me to one of my favourite long-term investments – what many readers insist is my “blind spot” and a market that no one has used the word “bubble” to describe for over two decades. I’m talking about Japan, of course (full disclosure:...