Let’s see, in the 1980s Japan’s corporate leaders thought they were going to take over the world. Investors thought so too. They expanded. They wheeled. They dealed. Prices shot up and they all thought they were geniuses.
November 13th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 13 comments | ContinuedAll Posts Tagged With: "Japan"
U.S. Government Must Roll Over $3.4 Trillion in Debt Over Next Four Years
And if America can’t find anyone willing to finance its deficits, what then? Well, the luxury of issuing debts in the currency you also print is that you can print money to pay for them. Technically, you can never become insolvent when you enjoy this privilege. The Fed, for example, can create new money to buy debt issued by the Treasury, funding deficits ad infinitum.
November 3rd, 2009 | Dan Denning | 5 comments | Continued
House Prices in California and Las Vegas Hit Hard by Wave of Foreclosed Properties
A fellow loses his job; he can’t pay his mortgage. The house goes onto the market and pushes down prices. Prices in California are off 30% year-to-year, with the median house at $267,000. In Las Vegas, the median house is only $135,000…
June 29th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 3 comments | Continued
Japan: A Morality Tale of Banks and Government Refusing to Deal With Debt?
This may puzzle some people. Wasn’t the Japanese economy roaring into a bubble in the late 1980s? Indeed it was – driven in part by the 300 basis point decline in interest rates that resulted from the soaring yen.
May 27th, 2009 | Nathan Lewis | 0 comments | Continued
Investors Tend to Race Ahead and Ruin the Whole Thing
If people could read next year’s fashion magazines, they’d buy tomorrow’s fashions today. Then, some wiseacre would buy the day after tomorrow’s fashions…just to be ahead of everyone else. And then, nobody would want to be stuck with tomorrow’s hairdo – it would already be out-of-style.
May 19th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
The World Needs More Richard Bransons
Not to be a Danny Downer, but arguably worse news comes out of Japan. There we learn that Japan ran its first current account deficit in 13 years-shocking news for an economy that’s driven by export growth. Exports fell a mind-boggling 46.3% from the year before.
March 10th, 2009 | Dan Denning | 1 comment | Continued
Obama’s Bailout: Too Little, Too Late?
The combination of falling earnings and falling P/Es does to stock prices approximately what the Romans did to Carthage in the third Punic War. That’s why we have our Crash Alert flag flying. Stock prices delenda est. Typically, depressions come with bear markets. And bear markets come with bounces and rallies. We expected an O! Bama! bounce after the election. We got one…but much less than we expected. Stocks only rallied about 15%…
February 19th, 2009 | Bill Bonner | 0 comments | Continued
Europe and Japan are in recession
It’s official, for what it’s worth. Both Europe and Japan are in recession. The Eurozone contracted by 0.2% for the second straight quarter. Germany (the largest economy in Europe) and Italy (fourth largest) both shrank in the third quarter. Japan’s economy-the world’s second largest-shrank by almost half a percentage point in the third quarter.
November 18th, 2008 | Dan Denning | 4 comments | Continued
Japan’s Slow-Motion Demographic Catastrophe
The number of children has declined for 27 consecutive years, a government report said over the weekend. Japan now has fewer children who are 14 or younger than at any time since 1908.
May 9th, 2008 | Bill Bonner | 8 comments | Continued