The Japanese economy sank yet again, more than suggesting there is no recovery from the “inflation”-led recession that began six months before any tax change. Almost right from the start of QQE, Q4 2013, Japan’s GDP has either been contracting or barely rising. The net result is the monetary hole left behind by so many flawed theories. Primary among them, [...]
With base comparisons out of the way moving past the calendar months of Japan’s tax change last year, the continuing recession re-emerges. Real wages fell 2.9% year-over-year in June despite “inflation” remaining far below (thankfully for the Japanese) Bank of Japan’s intentions. Contractual earnings nominally were slightly higher but “special cash earnings” fell 6.5% after rising 25% in May. That [...]
The old cliché is that everything of significance in life is a marathon rather than a sprint. In Japan, such sentiment strains all reason as there is no way that any marathon, economic or otherwise, could possibly be expected to last more twenty-five years. But here it is in 2015, thirty years after the Plaza Accord and BoJ’s first massive [...]
Japanese household spending increased 5.5% in nominal terms in May; 4.8% in real spending growth. That was the first monthly increase since November and since it was a positive number, and not as typically close to zero, it is being hailed as another great sign of QQE success. With Q1 GDP revised up to nearly 5%, economists are back to [...]
"While most investors were preoccupied with deflation, related to last year's plunge in oil prices, and the seemingly hopelessness of quantitative easing, a stealth recovery in private sector global credit demand was underway. We examined prospects for credit growth..which highlighted some surprising developments relative to the economic pessimism that had caused government bond yields to massively undershoot:" "The monetary transmission mechanism [...]
It was a nasty week for investors with almost no place - or at least no logical place - to hide. Of the 16 broad market ETFs I monitor on a daily basis, only one, was higher on the week - IWM, the Russell 2000 small cap ETF. That's what I mean by no logical place to hide. When the [...]
It wasn't a pretty week for stocks globally. Almost every major market was down - one prominent exception was Japan - and the minor ones were down more. China experienced a 6.5% hiccup mid-week that everyone seemed to want to see as, at least, the beginning of the end of that bull market so it probably was nothing more than [...]
At some point in the middle of the last century, economics of money shifted to economics of psychology. When Milton Friedman wrote his 1963 book, A Monetary History, it was an effort that uncovered the role of money in the collapse of the Great Depression as he and his co-author, Anna Schwartz, saw it. Whether or not it was a [...]
Japanese bank stocks surged over 50% from December 2012 through the first half of 2013. Since, they have been in what one might call a consolidation phase. The initial surge coincided with expectations of the effects of Abenomics. The consolidation was a 1.5 - 2 year wait and see period, somewhat of a battle between believers and doubters. Now, there has [...]
The Japanese have been encouraged today by the notion that their economy might actually be finding a recovery – as economists see it. As with so many other things in this QE period, the very definition of recovery seems to be up for debate in sharp contrast to accepted economic standards not all that long ago. The issue, really, is [...]
Stay In Touch