141–150 of 218 posts
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Not really what you asked for, but what I would say is that this specific incident isn't like some huge deal or something. It's just the USA doing something that helps Japan stabilize its currency, and helps the USA avoid a spike in people selling US treasuries (which would raise US borrowing costs). It's unusual, but not earth shattering or crazy. ____________________ The wider picture looks rather worrysome though.…
> unilaterally converting some already sold bonds to '100 year bonds' Is this even legal? I mean, is this possibility stated in some terms and conditions that one must accept when purchasing a bond?
I double checked and it wasn't actually Bessent who suggested it but Miran. This was back when he was a bigger figure, probably played a role in his sidelining.
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The devaluation of the Yen against the dollar (from the typical 110:1 to these days 150:1) started around 2021 and has been a source of angst in Japan for quite some time. People were complaining about it constantly when I was last in Tokyo in December 2025, when oil was at $70/barrel.
The devaluation didn't really get out of control until 2022 IME. In 2021 you were still able to divide by 100 and not be far off in conversion. Typically traded between 105 ~ 115. Nowadays the Yen is so weak that I unconditionally convert my whole paycheck to USD after paying rent. Even if risk-free interest rates between Japan and United States converge, there's just not much reason to hold Yen if you want to avoid…
Not to repeat myself, but I'll point to earlier comments about what's going on with interest rates [1]. For some context here, it's worth mentioning the Yen carry trade [2]. This is actually relevant because it allegedly underpins the AI investment boom [3] and the Yen appreciating is a real problem for investors who borrowed Yen to invest, particularly if it's into a bubble that may well pop. It's a double shammy. I…
The yen carry trade is when you borrow yen (at ~0% interest), convert to dollars, buy assets in dollars, those assets hopefully appreciate, but they don't have to appreciate all that much because you were able to buy them on leverage with no interest.
But the other way to win on that trade is if the yen becomes cheaper while you were holding dollar-based assets. So those who are currently in the carry trade (that is, have borrowed yen) would not mind if the yen suddenly became dramatically cheaper.
I think that's a longer form of what the parent is saying.
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As someone who hasn't followed this closely, when/why did things switch? Japan had the opposite deflation problem for years (decades?) and IIRC tried battling that with "money printer go brrrr" for a long time. How did inflation become their primary problem?
My understanding is that Japan experienced the same kind of phenomenon that is unwinding in the US right now. As long as your markets and tax policy are vicious enough that lots of normal people can barely make ends meet, you can print as much money as you want and it won't show up on the CPI. Instead, if you funnel that money to rich people, it will show entirely as growth in the price of investment instruments. At…
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Understanding, absolutely. None of us are immune from propaganda, and most of us have at one time or another been swayed by selective arguments and echo chambers to behave poorly. I don’t like that you have empathy for people who are right this second steering the government in a project of performative cruelty against me. I think you should withhold your empathy until they’ve been stopped and appropriately punished…
Are you perhaps mixing up empathy and sympathy?
Can anyone steel man the “this isn’t a big deal” side of this? On x and reddit all I see are sky is falling posts.
Best I can do is point out that much of American economic history for the past 300 years has been stumbling from crisis to crisis, and somehow we muddle through. A good book to understand this is https://a.co/d/0aTW4L6D
We only have a limited sample size of economic data.
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Do you think justice should only be dealt out when you think it'll generate a positive outcome for you personally on the other side? Seems to me that people who have committed crimes should be punished for those crimes. Call it "LAW AND ORDER!!!!" or something
I think that winning (and retaining political advantage over time) is probably a prerequisite for enacting any punishments, much less correcting other issues.
I'm quite sure the single most popular platform someone could run on today is simply "aggressively prosecute every single crime committed by the MAGA apparatus."