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Why Japan Is Doomed

oftwominds.com

1–10 of 94 posts

Re: Why Japan Is Doomed

#2
The original article title is "Why Japan is Doomed (and the U.S. and the E.U. too)". The Greek debt crises seems to be looming in the future for Japan, the U.S., and the E.U. as well. There doesn't seem to be very many serious plans to stop the accruing debt, and those who think that the debt is no problem are addressed in the article:

Those in denial about Japan's reliance on ballooning debt to fund its status quo (and on America's exact same reliance) basically claim that "It can't happen because it hasn't happened."

Re: Why Japan Is Doomed

#3
Will someone be able to exploit this for profit? I haven't enough macro-economy knowledge to evaluate this, but looks likely. Sadly, i haven't seen yet any article on future scenarios in case of a global crisis caused by multiple nations going to default... any interesting link about this will be highly appreciated.

Re: Why Japan Is Doomed

#4
"Millions of Japanese aged 25 to 34 toil as temps or contract employees-- up from 1.5 million 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These workers tend to earn about one-third the typical "salaryman" wages that their fathers earned"

I lived in Tokyo last year in a cheap apartment with alot of young Japanese people, and I was very surprised by their lack of work ethic/prospect from my first time in Japan. They would bounce from temp work (typing) to temp work (waiter) to temp work (salesperson walking everywhere in tokyo door to door), quitting every 2-3 weeks. They would sometimes sleep in and not show up for interview, and wouldn't even call to reschedule. The way they would quit a job they didn't like is by....not showing up anymore. Keep in mind these are people that went to pretty decent universities in Japan, and speak ok english. And when they do get a full time job offer, they would have to wait almost half a year to a year to start working (which I would think depress their morale).

Re: Why Japan Is Doomed

#5
post #3

Will someone be able to exploit this for profit? I haven't enough macro-economy knowledge to evaluate this, but looks likely. Sadly, i haven't seen yet any article on future scenarios in case of a global crisis caused by multiple nations going to default... any interesting link about this will be highly appreciated.

Credit Default Swaps could be purchased on the relevant sovereign debt.

Given the success that various hedge funds had with this strategy during the crash of mortgage backed CDOs a couple of years back I would have thought that there must be a lot of speculation of this kind going on.

Assuming that there are still sellers of CDSs out there...

Re: Why Japan Is Doomed

#6

"Millions of Japanese aged 25 to 34 toil as temps or contract employees-- up from 1.5 million 10 years ago, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. These workers tend to earn about one-third the typical "salaryman" wages that their fathers earned" I lived in Tokyo last year in a cheap apartment with alot of young Japanese people, and I was very surprised by their lack of work ethic/prospect from my first time…

> and I was very surprised by their lack of work ethic/prospect from my first time in Japan

Why would you be surprised by their "lack of work ethics"? They got fucked hard, so it's understandable that they aren't going to care much for "the man" anymore: they were told their contract was to work like mad in their studies, get to a good university and end up landing a good job in a multinational where they'd work their whole life slowly climbing up the hierarchy and pretty much guaranteed they'd be there for life.

Instead, at the end of their studies they found an utterly slaughtered job market and a crappy economy in which Japan has been stuck for 20 years (especially those who got out during the Lost Decade of the 90s).

They don't have "good work ethics" because they've managed not to be stockholm syndrome victims, and because reality showed them strong work ethics didn't matter, and promises were there to be broken.

Re: Why Japan Is Doomed

#8
post #5
post #3

Will someone be able to exploit this for profit? I haven't enough macro-economy knowledge to evaluate this, but looks likely. Sadly, i haven't seen yet any article on future scenarios in case of a global crisis caused by multiple nations going to default... any interesting link about this will be highly appreciated.

Credit Default Swaps could be purchased on the relevant sovereign debt. Given the success that various hedge funds had with this strategy during the crash of mortgage backed CDOs a couple of years back I would have thought that there must be a lot of speculation of this kind going on. Assuming that there are still sellers of CDSs out there...

And remember: timing is everything. Japan has been obviously fked for a long, long time now, but hasn't paid much of a price for it in the bond market. Now that they are going to have to finance their debt externally, maybe reality will assert itself.

But maybe not.

Cheers, Carson

Re: Why Japan Is Doomed

#10
post #3

Will someone be able to exploit this for profit? I haven't enough macro-economy knowledge to evaluate this, but looks likely. Sadly, i haven't seen yet any article on future scenarios in case of a global crisis caused by multiple nations going to default... any interesting link about this will be highly appreciated.

George Soros seems to do really well in shorting dollars, yen, and euro in the last 3 years or so. Timing is key there, though, so if you can't you shouldn't.

He's lately had his chips all-in on Asia, particularly stock exchanges in India and buying up yuan and sgd. Of course, because of these times of uncertainty, he's also long on gold bullion.

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