Japan's Finance Minister Accidentally Reveals How It All Ends: "War"

Surprise, surprise..the "progressive" solution to economic malaise is war.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-03-26/japans-finance-minister-accidentally-reveals-how-it-all-ends-war

Here Is One Country In The West That Is Saying No To The Madness

http://kingworldnews.com/here-is-one-country-in-the-west-that-is-saying-no-to-the-madness/

Economic Sanctions Cause War, Not Peace—–Some Lessons From FDR’s Embargo Against Japan

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/economic-sanctions-cause-war-not-peace-some-lessons-from-fdrs-embargo-against-japan/

Game Over Japan: Real Wages Crash Most In 21st Century, Savings Rate Turns Negative

Japan is toast.  They are trapped in a Keynesian debt (death) spiral.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-12-26/game-over-japan-real-wages-crash-most-21st-century-savings-rate-turns-negative

Game over, Japan

It appears the breaking point for a country to default on its obligations is when 50% of tax revenues are used to pay the interest on its debt.

http://www.sovereignman.com/trends/game-over-japan-15686/

'Godfather' of Abenomics: Japan's sales tax hike must be delayed

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11232512/Godfather-of-Abenomics-Japans-sales-tax-hike-must-be-delayed.html

Marc Faber, the famous Swiss investor, has accused Japan of "engaging in a Ponzi scheme" because the BoJ is hoovering up most of the debt that has been issued by the government. While Mr Hamada agreed that Japan had created a "mild ponzi game", he also said it was a "feasible" one because of Japan's huge foreign reserves.

“In a Ponzi game you exhaust the lenders eventually, and of course Japanese taxpayers may revolt. But otherwise there are always new taxpayers, so this is a feasible Ponzi game, though I'm not saying it's good.”

Someone please prove to me Japan's train wreck isn't about go off the rails.

This Will Trigger A Wipeout Of Markets & Economies Worldwide

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/11/7_This_Will_Trigger_A_Wipeout_Of_Markets_%26_Economies_Worldwide.html

Japan Creates World's Biggest Bond Bubble

It's just a matter of time now.  Japan is about to implode.  Kyle Bass will be proven right--again.

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2014-11-04/japan-creates-world-s-biggest-bond-bubble

This Is The Worst Nightmare For the United States & The West

I've always said Americans should watch Japan's train wreck of an economy, because we are on the same trajectory as theirs--but with a few years' time lag.  And our Keynesian experiment of debt monetization will be more catastrophic because the US holds the global reserve currency.  Everybody will be dumping dollars once confidence in the bond and currency markets collapses.

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2014/8/17_This_Is_The_Worst_Nightmare_For_the_United_States_%26_The_West.html

We heard the “surprising” news last week that the Japanese economy shrank at an alarming 6.8 percent annualized rate in the three months through June, its biggest quarterly contraction since the 2011 earth quake and tsunami. This proves that Japan’s greatest national disaster, Abenomics, has failed and the Japanese economy has fallen victim to the scam called Keynesian economics -- the belief that a country can tax, spend, devalue, and inflate its way to prosperity....

Since the popping of the BOJ- induced bubble in 1989, Japan has been the most faithful adherent of Keynesian principles. At the onset of the crisis they immediately began on their misguided path with large doses of deficit spending. Instead of allowing the economy to rid itself of bad investments and heal, they continued to prop up failed business models -- creating zombie banks and an equally zombie-like economy.

As one lost decade turned into two, in the year 2000 they coupled their fruitless spending efforts with massive amounts of money printing.  And despite two decades of low growth, the nation stubbornly held on to the popular Keynesian excuse of “if only”: If only our stimulus was larger, if only we weakened our currency more, if only we kept interest rates lower for longer; economic Nirvana would be achieved.  Keynesians love to use this counterfactual argument because they believe it cannot be proven wrong -- that is, until now.

In 2012 Prime Minister Abe had a master plan to pull the world's third-biggest economy out of its stagnation. His plan was to deploy, in massive and unprecedented fashion, the strategies of central bank credit creation, currency destruction, and debt accumulation.  The Japanese doubled down on the great Keynesian experiment. As if Paul Krugman himself was running the economy, they placed the economy on Keynesian steroids.  Now we are beginning to see what an economy looks like when the Keynesian playbook is used to its fullest extent.

Household consumption plummeted at an annualized pace of 19.2 percent from the previous quarter, while private investment sank 9.7 percent. And because of the Japanese battle against deflation, real wages dropped 3.8 percent year on year in May. Those mismanaging the Japanese economy believe that consumption will surge if they can achieve a substantial increase in the CPI. The misguided logic is that Japanese consumers will spend only if they are running in perpetual fear of rising prices.

One of the cornerstones of Abenomics was destroying your currency with the hopes of boosting exports. Ironically, last week the central bank warned over a worsening export and factory output picture.  In fact, June showed the worst trade deficit ever in Japan, and a 57 percent rise in the trade deficit for the first half of the year.

And today with a near 250 percent debt-to-GDP ratio, it’s difficult to argue that Japan didn’t engage in enough deficit spending.  Over the past three years interest rates on the Japanese government bond 10-year note went from 1.5 percent to 0.52 percent.  Under its own brand of quantitative easing policy put in place last April, the Bank of Japan now buys 70 percent of all new government bonds issued in markets, as well as other more risky assets.  With the JGB market on virtual life support courtesy of the BOJ, it is impossible to argue that rates aren’t low enough or that the BOJ hasn’t monetized enough. They spent, they printed, they taxed; but the Japanese economy is out of gas, and the Keynesians who own this plan are now out of excuses.

The United States should heed Japan’s economic woes as a warning sign and a reason to change course while we still have a chance. With U.S. debt to GDP at 105 percent and household debt at more than 80 percent, the aggregate amount of our nation’s debt is at an all-time high. But unlike Japan we have the overwhelming privilege and responsibility of holding the world’s reserve currency.

Obliging other nations to trade and hold U.S. dollars is not written anywhere in the Bible. For the time being other nations decided to maintain a holding equal to 50 percent of our publicly traded Treasury debt. Losing their confidence in our credit and currency would be devastating to our economy. Japan has no such worries about keeping foreign investors happy because that country finances 90 percent of its debt internally.

We have become a country that over-consumes and under-produces. Debt levels have skyrocketed while our demographic and labor force participation conditions are quickly approaching critical mass.

We have to abandon these failed Keynesian policies while there is still time. We must boost our employment-to-population ratio, deregulate the economy, simplify the tax code, balance the budget by cutting expenses, end the Fed’s runaway printing press, and allow the free market to set interest rates and asset prices. Only by doing this do we stand a chance of not falling further into Japan’s stagflationary nightmare. But if we persist in following the Keynesian counterfactual, our fate will be worse than that of Japan, as the deluge of debt being dumped by our foreign creditors causes the dollar to be dethroned, interest rates to soar, and inflation to skyrocket.

Japan’s Keynesian Demise: A Cautionary Tale For Our Times

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/japans-keynesian-demise-a-cautionary-tale-for-our-times/

Kyle Bass: The Looming Crises in Asia

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/newsletters14/Kyle_Bass-The_Looming_Crises_in_Asia.php

People To Lose Confidence In Dark Forces Ruling West & Japan

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/11/22_People_To_Lose_Confidence_In_Dark_Forces_Ruling_West_%26_Japan.html

3 Disasters Now Threaten To Collapse The World Economy

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldnews/KWN_DailyWeb/Entries/2013/9/28_3_Disasters_Now_Threaten_To_Collapse_The_World_Economy.html

Japan's 2014 Debt Interest Costs Rise 14% To Record $257 Billion, Same As Singapore GDP

It's about to be game over for Japan, Inc. if bond yields keep rising.  It's just a matter of time.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-27/japans-2014-debt-interest-rise-record-257-same-singapore-gdp

China, Japan Sell Most US Paper In Years; Foreign Treasury Holdings At 2013 Lows

China and Japan are dumping US Treasuries, which is what we predicted, and is disconcerting enough.  What's more disturbing is the composition of their dumping--short-term bills.  Because without big buyers of short-term paper, the Fed will need to step up their status as buyer of last resort.  Which takes any talk of "tapering" off the table.

US Treasury bond buyers are fleeing, and without the Fed propping up bond purchases, expect yields to spike and said bond prices to flop.   Ooops, already happening...

Junk bonds:  the US Treasury can't live with them, and they can't live without them.  The problem is I wasn't referring to high-yielding corporate bonds--I was inferring US Treasury bonds themselves.

The uproar in 2011 over the downgrading of US Treasury bonds was misplaced.  The downgrade should have been even steeper. 

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-15/china-japan-sell-most-us-paper-years-foreign-treasury-holdings-2013-lows

Exclusive: Japan nuclear body says radioactive water at Fukushima an 'emergency'

So if a rash of Californians develop cancer, or premature babies are born with deformities, can we sue Japan, Inc.?

http://preview.reuters.com/2013/8/5/fukushima-radioactive-water-likely-breached

Japan’s Easy Money Tsunami

This explains why currency wars may be temporarily stimulative to export economies, but also why they always end in tears.

http://mises.org/daily/6445/Japans-Easy-Money-Tsunami

Apple Raises Prices for Some Products in Japan on Yen

Sovereign countries devalue their currencies as an attempt to stimulate their exports.  It's usually successful in the short-term, but the unintended consequences are higher import prices and inflation (despite official justification for mild inflation), which in the long run, dampens the economy.  And when all countries engage in the "beggar-thy-neighbor" currency war of devaluation, international trade stalls, even when inflation rises.  See Great Depression.  See today.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-31/apple-raises-prices-for-some-products-in-japan-on-yen.html

Japan is 'adding a Ponzi scheme to a Ponzi scheme'

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/10045933/Japan-is-adding-a-Ponzi-scheme-to-a-Ponzi-scheme.html

LAND OF THE DYING SUN: JAPAN’S LOOMING DEBT CRISIS

http://prospectjournal.org/2013/05/09/land-of-the-dying-sun-japans-looming-crisis/