While the US is bogged down in endless wars against angry Muslims, as we fall apart internally due to using assassins to fight our wars, as we go bankrupt while trying to patrol the planet, the US and Japan as well as NATO economies are falling into one slump after another. Meanwhile, China unleashes North Korea into the teeth of US/Japan territorial demands and what I call ‘Baby Dragon’ coughs burning hellfire threats at South Korea and Japan. So much for our naked attempt at circling China with Japanese territories!
The head of the Bank of Japan is resigning early to let in Abe’s choice who is a ‘explode the yen money bomb’ person who will print yen like crazy and this, he imagines, will stop the Chinese…HAHAHA. Fat chance. One of Japan’s top trade partners is still China although the Chinese are beginning to strangle this trade. It always pays to look at the FOREX reserves of various nations to see who is holding what currencies and why:
List of countries by foreign-exchange reserves – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
China is not only the #1 currency holder, it has nearly triple what Japan has. This means, China can easily sop up a lot of yen if they force the Japanese to do business using yen. Japan is terrified of this. They have decided this year that the Bank of Japan will now sop up ALL government red ink rather than sell it abroad because China can buy every yen easily if they think in Beijing, this will cripple Japan’s independence.
The danger of printing trillions of yen is simple: inflation. The Japanese pretend there is no inflation but what there really is: wage destruction. The Japanese worker is falling from first world status to third world status in just one generation. Desperate university graduates are not finding jobs in nearly the numbers the school produces with over one third finding no work in their fields.
The common workers are being systematically reduced to part time wage slaves with no benefits, no healthcare and no hope for future pay raises. So the Bank of Japan can flood Japan with trillions of yen but this won’t circulate inside Japan’s economy. The US does the same: half of all the money created by our bankers and the Fed flowed overseas and we have depression in wages while inflation slays our finances when it comes to food, fuel and other things we need to survive.
A few facts about the Japan Foreign Exchange Reserves
Foreign Exchange Reserves in Japan decreased to 1258809 USD Million in February of 2013 from 1267299 USD Million in January of 2013. Foreign Exchange Reserves in Japan is reported by the Ministry of Finance, Japan. Historically, from 1957 until 2013, Japan Foreign Exchange Reserves averaged 231803.10 USD Million reaching an all time high of 1306668 USD Million in January of 2012 and a record low of 455 USD Million in September of 1957
And before the Great Tohoku Quake and Fukushima disaster, it was less than $110 trillion. During the last two years, Japan has run bigger and bigger government and trade deficits, no longer a surplus trade country. Yet they could pad their FOREX reserves with mainly US and EU currency stashes. This was to weaken the yen so they could export heavily again.
Slowly they are drawing down their funds as Japan’s forex reserves down 4th straight month. Japan unlikely to suffer hyperinflation, says Abe ‹ Japan Today: Japan News and Discussion which is called ‘whistling past the graveyard of central bank disasters in the past’.
“Some people talk about hyper inflation, but I think it is safe to say it is unlikely. If the two percent price target is exceeded, the Bank of Japan would naturally take steps to keep (inflation) within two percent,” Abe told a news conference.
So far, inflation doesn’t happen due to virtually no money flowing to the bulk of the population. The elderly don’t buy cars or other things and young Japanese can’t buy much of anything or even have children. The Bank of Japan issued the minutes of their most recent meeting and it is a bland potpourri of assurances and wishful thinking and like our own Fed, they muse about the declining state of the workers while suggesting nothing to stop this madness:
http://www.boj.or.jp/en/mopo/mpmsche_minu/minu_2013/g130214.pdf
1. Economic developments Exports continued to decrease, but the pace of decrease had been moderating.
Real exports continued to decline in the October-December quarter of 2012 on a quarter-on-quarter basis, after having registered a large decrease in the July-September quarter. On a monthly basis, however, they rose — albeit very slightly — in November for the first time in seven months, and posted only a tiny decline in December. Exports were expected to stop decreasing and start picking up as overseas economies gradually emerged from the deceleration phase.
Japan decided long ago to forget about domestic markets and put everything into the ‘export to the US’ basket. When the US becomes a basket case country, this flounders. The Japanese make our condition worse but like any leech operation, they need to continue sucking blood. Oneway trade has killed the US golden goose. Before the great quake, Japan was counting on China to sop up more exports. But now this has been thrown away by the imperialist gang in the LDP.
Business fixed investment had shown some weakness on the whole, as that in manufacturing had declined due to the drop in exports and industrial production, although resilience had been observed in that in nonmanufacturing. Machinery orders remained relatively weak due to the drop in manufacturing, but had recently shown signs that they had stopped decreasing.
The rest of the meeting, the Japanese nervously talk about China and they assume China will give up and let the LDP grab territory claimed by China. This is an insane hope. The Chinese daily challenge the Japanese military and are sizing up how weak or distracted the US and Japan are and naturally, unleashed Baby Dragon in North Korea to test the waters of war. North Korea threatens to attack South island and North Korea no longer answering South Korea’s phone calls and now declares 1953 armistice invalid. Basically, they are at war with the US again.
In Japan, corruption at the top continues: Yakuza’s Debtors Forced to Work at Fukushima Daiichi? This story was covered by daring reporters in the Japanese media. Back to the meeting of the board of the Bank of Japan:
The employment and income situation remained severe and the improvement in supply and demand conditions in the labor market continued to peak out.
Private consumption remained resilient and the effects of the decline in car sales due to the ending of some measures to stimulate demand for automobiles had fallen off. The number of new passenger-car registrations, including those for small cars with engine sizes of 660cc or less, fell back significantly through October
Car sales have slumped for years. The domestic market in Japan is in severe decline. Young people can’t buy cars and the elderly can’t drive. When I travel around Japan in Google Map mode, I see very few cars in the streets and even fewer sitting at home but I see more and more bikes mainly with women peddling them. It looks more and more like China 25 years ago.
5. Regarding risks, there remains a high degree of uncertainty concerning Japan’s economy, including the prospects for the European debt problem, the momentum toward recovery for the U.S. economy, the possibility of emerging and commodity-exporting economies making a smooth transition to the sustainable growth path, and the effects of the recent bilateral relationship between Japan and China.
The board has no solution to the crisis between Japan and China. They are passive watchers who are now printing a heroic number of yen to fuel higher military spending and more aggression. This always ends badly.
News about the yen from Australia which exports lots of commodity metals to Japan: Japan’s Spring Offensive Against the Yen – International Business Times
In other words, you get a rally in Australian stocks driven almost exclusively by capital flows from overseas. Sure, some of the move will be driven by money coming out of ‘safe’ fixed income assets. And some will come from cash. But a lot will come from investors playing the ‘carry trade’.
These are always the most dangerous type of rallies. They’re dangerous because they’re hard to resist.
Like the derivative contract games Wall Street loves, the Japanese carry trade game created by the Bank of Japan is very popular and it floods the earth with currencies that fuel inflation in particular, inflating stock markets and property markets. And as I pointed out years and years ago, THIS is the problem. We can’t stop Japan from flooding the earth with cheap ZIRP money because we are doing it too! And as China sops up a lot of this money, it makes China more and more powerful because all it has to do is vomit up $3+trillion in foreign money and boom: we have instant hyperinflation hammering the euro, yen and dollar.
And a war over territory will cause this to happen. One last item about our corrupt Congress: Samsung increases spending on U.S. lobbyists to $900K. Yes, our other happy ally, South Korea will, like Japan and Israel, bribe our Congress to pass laws, enable trade and so on so that South Korea can suck us dry. And the Chinese love this, they were very excited to learn that Reagan was bribed by Japan back in 1988. So it is with all our politicians. We didn’t put Reagan in prison and so they all ran with hands out for foreign bribes.
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http://www.japantoday.com/category/national/view/china-plans-to-send-surveyors-to-disputed-islands
The minute I published this, news about China surveying the disputed islands hits. The government of China definitely has decided to let North Korea go batshit crazy as a distraction tactic.
Exponential growth world wide just cannot go on forever.It worked (kinda)for a few decades but what now?What politician is going to speak the truth that growth is over and we have to think of other ways to survive?
Economies that don’t rely on mindless consuming and war-mongering and resource theft.Local economies that don’t toss someone to the curb if the get in a bit of trouble.Tribal sensibilities.Living with the earth.Economies that don’t have to develop(destroy)the landscape.
Here’s a link to a Bloomberg story on Japan’s devaluation: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-13/toyota-helped-by-yen-detroit-sees-as-5-700-per-car-bonus.html
The yen has fallen 17 percent against the dollar since Oct. 31 as Shinzo Abe, who became Japan’s prime minister in December, advocated for the decline to improve his country’s economy. The currency’s slide gives Toyota and other Japanese automakers a financial gain on every car, which they can use to cut prices, boost ads and improve products. Morgan Stanley estimates the currency boost at $1,500 per car, while the Detroit automakers contend the figure is $5,700 per vehicle.
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke endorsed Abe’s currency policies in Congressional testimony Feb. 26, saying it was “mutually beneficial” if major economies take steps to boost demand and eliminate deflation.
“We don’t view monetary policy aimed at domestic goals as being a currency war,” Bernanke told the Senate Banking Committee. “It’s not like putting tariffs on your imports, so that you can beggar-thy-neighbor to the benefit of your domestic industries.”
“batshit crazy” has gotten to be a favored commentary in the …google…daily mail uk.com…..off to my search for a toolie to design a sandwich graft of two layers of harvested vein grafting materiel that has a strong mesh between that could be implanted like a stent graft in a catheter but would allow a healing at the joinery to the higher aorta area using either a trans catheter implantable suturing maching or a lazer burning after the clearing of an iliac artery using a cold lazer with the joinery being the healable wound a method of stent grafting which is a method of avoiding a very very invasive surgury that by my eyesight seen being fatal thru either graft failure or extreme invasiveness caused weaknesses. The tool manufactures in my present contactability recogonize the need of suturing thru catheter machings or are near the location of the burning areas with tool transcatheter but have not the yet legal licencing availability as burners with tool in parts over the continents to prevent endo leaks that occur with non healability at the joinerys that then may require the invasive surgury or maintenence but suggest finding trusted practicioner thereby leaving me wondering about failing to remember the past and forever doomed to repeat it……..too techinal but a breakthru thought on my personal quandry today……….
and for the third writting attempt of trying to get clarity of statement and erasing the second one that was more definitively clear i send that note anyway…pardon.
Ah, the best laid plans, indeed.
While we’re going around the world enforcing military and economic hegemony we’re strangling our own middle class and letting infrastructure fall apart. Take a look at Michigan, and understand that the population is being put under “appointed” managers instead of elected officials. Is this an experiment in fascism?
Question is when the calculus of change kicks in will we be the victims of foreign control
We are surely paving the way.
Elaine has previously said that she thinks there’s no way to fix things until there’s an actual economic collapse within the US. I’m not giving up all hope just yet, but I’m afraid she may be correct (yet again). The public is too apathetic, jaded, self-absorbed and unintelligent to make the effort needed to throw off the oligarchy.
I personally believe this is a result of a half-century of ever-expanding “nanny-statism,” which subsidizes the incapable and unmotivated at the expense of everyone else, resulting in an ever-increasing percentage of the population who wish to have everything done for them – including their thinking…
Uhh… I disagree with your conclusion. I was at the doctor’s office today and had to read Time magazine for want of anything better, and the editorial article at the end, usually the last two pages, was actually very interesting.
It was written by Joel Klein (?) and was titled “Voting with the 1%”. It was not about voting for them or their way, but actually attending the place where they voted on election day — the Bel Aire Hotel in California somewhere. He describes what went on in a sarcastic, but sad way, or maybe casual way, but the statements made by those present who were not members of the 1% were most revealing. You should read it. I believe it is quite recent.
“apathetic, jaded, self-absorbed and unintelligent”
To some extent, yes, but also greedy. It is greed that keeps the people in their place, for they all want to be members of the one percent. The waving of “free stuff” in front of their faces is all they care about, and Mr. Klein concluded that the superrich felt that they were “entitled” — more than any other group — to “free stuff”, as a matter of divine right.
“Nanny state” is a new political word that has no real meaning. You should drop it along with all other political words and just watch people.
Watch what they do.
You don’t have to tell me that the “entitlement” mentality of the manor houses puts the entitlement mentality of the ghettos, barios and trailer parks to shame.
However, I stand by my conclusion. It’s funny; the national parks all have signs that say, “don’t feed the animals.” Their reasoning is that the animals will grow dependent on handouts, and never learn to take care of themselves. Unless you’re one of those religious zealots who think that H. Sapiens isn’t an animal, you can see where this is going. What do you suppose the net result of a half-century of the welfare state, of government promoting the “entitlement” mentality, has been? Humans, like all apex preditors, are as lazy as their surroundings will allow them to be. Multiplied over successive generations, the result is a permanent dependent class. They’ve been “tamed” by government.
This plays into the hands of the top 0.01%, who have rigged the tax-and-spend system to devour the top 1% (except for themselves, of course), and even though most of the government goodies go to that top 0.01%, the poor are used as the excuse to tax the middle and upper middle classes into oblivion. The ruse works; you referenced the “top 1%” without ever stpping to reaally think about who that entails. I promise you, Lord Blankfein is not a “top 1%er.” He’s far, far above that level, as are the rest of the people who ACTUALLY are causing the problems in the world today. The “top 1%,” minus the actual oligarchy, are the upper middle classes. Think “small business owners.” To the extent they work in the corporate world, they’re too far down the pecking order to be the cause of the problem (and also too far down to do anything about it either, except get fired for trying).
So far as nanny state being a meaningless term: what do you call Doomberg’s soda ban, or Feinstein’s anti-gun crusade, or any of the rest of the modern American government’s policies at all levels (Federal, State, local)? I think “nanny state” perfectly describes what they want to achieve, which is a world full of perpetual infants, who cannot survive without them.