Japan Archives - Page 2 of 4 - the patient investor %

June 8, 2014December 1, 2021

China’s Investment-Driven Growth “Miracle”

Worth Wray quotes Michael Pettis from his 2013 book, Avoiding the Fall: China’s Economic Restructuring, about the future path of China’s debt-laden economy:

Every country that has followed a consumption-repressing, investment-driven growth model like China’s has ended with an unsustainable debt burden caused by wasted debt-financed investment. This has always led to either a debt crisis or a lost decade of very low growth.

We couldn’t agree more. China is no different to Japan or Brazil. Investment-driven growth is only sustainable where investment earns a higher return than the long-term cost of servicing the debt. With diminishing returns on additional investment, returns dwindle and a debt/investment imbalance develops.

Keynesian thinking goes even further, however, suggesting that a fiscal deficit can be used to fund expenditure that does not earn a return, whether public fountains or school libraries. But that is short-term thinking, as Keynes indirectly acknowledged with his response “in the long run we are all dead.” In the long run, as with Japan, the government ends up with a huge pile of public debt and no income from investment assets with which to service the interest, let alone repay the principal.

The effect of a Chinese slow-down is likely to be similar to that of Japan in the early 1990s — just on a larger scale.

May 26, 2013

Two cheers for higher Japanese bond yields in the spirit of Milton Friedman | The Market Monetarist

Market monetarist Lars Christensen gives an insight into rising Japanese (JGB) bond yields:

…..the markets do not think that the Japanese government is about to go bankrupt. In fact completely in parallel with the increase in inflation expectations the markets’ perception of the Japanese government’s default risk have decreased significantly. Hence, the 5-year Credit Default Swap on Japan has dropped from around 225bp in October last year just after Mr. Abe was elected Prime Minister to around 70bp today!

May 21, 2013

Carney Warns Europe Faces Decade of Stagnation Without Key Reforms | WSJ

Nirmala Menon at WSJ quotes Mark Carney, incoming governor of the Bank of England:

Mr. Carney, currently Canada’s top central banker, said Europe can draw lessons from Japan on the dangers of taking half measures……..“Deep challenges persist in its financial system. Without sustained and significant reforms, a decade of stagnation threatens,” Mr. Carney said in his final public address as governor of the Bank of Canada.

May 6, 2013

Beware China’s civilian-military relationship | The Japan Times

Masahiro Matsumura, professor of international politics at St. Andrew’s University (Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku) in Osaka, writes

…….the Chinese state apparatus is largely detached from the military, while the party’s top civilian leaders have only a loose grip on the generals.

Worse still, the current fifth generation of civilian leaders is made up of veritable dwarfs in military affairs. By contrast, the PLA’s leaders have become increasingly professionalized, but without the tempering influence of effective civilian control, which might well collapse entirely if China’s leaders continue to accept unauthorized military actions, particularly in the East or South China Sea, as faits accomplis. Line commanders could take advantage of the equivocality of civilian policy, particularly given the military’s growing political clout and the CCP’s dependence on popular nationalist sentiment.

March 28, 2013

Will the Chinese Be Supreme? | Ian Johnson | The New York Review of Books

Ian Johnson highlights how China’s strategic blunders have painted it into a corner:

Just as [Pre WW I] Wilhelminian Germany should surely have seen that building a blue-water navy would cause Britain to form alliances against it, so too should China understand that demanding control over islands far from its shores but close to its neighbors’ would cause a backlash. (Here one thinks not so much of the Senkaku/Diaoyus but of the shoals, reefs, and islets in the South China Sea.) Even the battle for the Senkaku/Diaoyus seems to have no satisfactory endgame for China except a permanent state of tension with its most important neighbor.

……..today the country’s tactics have left it surrounded by suspicious and increasingly hostile countries; indeed, it’s probably no exaggeration to say that China has no real allies.

February 13, 2013

Time for U.S. to Disengage from North Korea Crisis | Cato Institute

Doug Bandow suggests:

Washington should begin contemplating, within earshot of Beijing, getting out of the way of its allies if the North continues to develop nuclear weapons. The message to China should be: if your client state continues its present course, you may face a nuclear-armed Japan. If that happens, blame your buddies in Pyongyang.

Colin Twiggs

Colin Twiggs is a former investment banker with almost 40 years of experience in financial markets. He co-founded Incredible Charts and writes the popular Trading Diary and Patient Investor newsletters.

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

Focusing on interest rates and financial market liquidity as primary drivers of the economic cycle, he warned of the 2008/2009 and 2020 bear markets well ahead of actual events.
He founded PVT Capital (AFSL No. 546090) in May 2023, which offers investment strategy and advice to wholesale clients.

February 5, 2013

Nana Rolland: North Korean Pawn in a Chinese Chess Game – WSJ.com

NANA ROLLAND at WSJ writes:

While it steps up its own provocative actions, including recurrent intrusions into Japanese waters and airspace around the disputed islands, China exhorts the U.S. to restrain its “troublemaking” Japanese friends. The implied linkage is clear: As Beijing tries to forestall North Korean brinksmanship, it expects Washington to do the same.

We have seen this gambit before. In 2003, when Beijing feared that Taiwanese president Chen Shui-bian might be inching toward independence, it called on Washington to bring him to heel. In return, it agreed to host multiparty negotiations to persuade Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear-weapons programs.

Beijing got the better end of that deal…..

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

December 9, 2012

China is now heading toward Japan-style economic paralysis if it doesnt change course | Quartz

Jack Rodman, president of Global Distressed Solutions LLC, spent 1999 to 2011 living in Japan and China, packaging and disposing of nonperforming loans and distressed assets. He writes on the problems facing China:

At the end of 1989, Japan’s bubble economy burst and its economic miracle came to an abrupt end. The Nikkei exchange fell from nearly 40,000 to its current 10,000 range. Over the course of 20 years, what appeared to be “unstoppable” economic growth proved to be anything but.

Today, China, in some ways, appears to be closer to following Japan than to sustaining its own economic miracle. China’s Shanghai Index (stocks) has fallen from a high of 7,000 in 2007 to a low of 2,000 for the past few years, and Chinese domestic investors have little confidence in their domestic stock market. The Japanese bubble, and its aftermath, was the result of a series of domestic financial and economic imbalances, many of which China faces today—to varying if not greater degrees….

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

November 12, 2012

Japan economy shrinks as China dispute takes toll

Elaine Kurtenbach at USA Today writes:

Japan’s economy contracted in the latest quarter, signaling that like Europe it may already be in recession, further weighing down world growth. On an annualized basis, the world’s No. 3 economy shrank 3.5% in the July-September quarter, the government reported Monday. It was in line with gloomy forecasts after Japan’s territorial dispute with China hammered exports that were already weakened by feeble global demand……

Rajeshni Naidu-Ghelani at CNBC writes that Japan’s recovery depends on global demand:

Izumi Devalier, Japan economist at HSBC in Hong Kong backed that sentiment saying Japan’s economic development over the past decade shows that it’s been extremely dependent on exports and external demand.

“Sad to say, Japan will have to wait for the overseas economies to pick up before it sees its own economy really lifted,” Devalier told CNBC.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.

September 22, 2012

As the U.S. Borrows, Who Lends? – NYTimes.com

By Floyd Norris

Estimates by the Treasury Department released this week indicated that over the 12 months through July, China reduced its position in Treasury securities by $165 billion, cutting them to $1.15 trillion despite making a small amount of purchases in July. And the Federal Reserve reported that, as of Wednesday, it owned $1.65 trillion in Treasury securities, $17 billion less than it had owned a year earlier.

…..China’s selling of Treasuries over the 12-month period was offset by the actions of Japan, another country whose trade surplus with the United States remains large. The Japanese are estimated to have increased their holdings by $232 billion over the 12 months, to $1.12 trillion. Those figures include both government and private holders of Treasuries.

via As the U.S. Borrows, Who Lends? – NYTimes.com.

Colin Twiggs

Using a top-down approach, Colin identifies key macro trends in the global economy before evaluating selected opportunities using a combination of fundamental and technical analysis.