Japan Post to drastically change investment strategy

Nice little gift to the finance industry. Moves more money into the stock market to push up prices, creates lots of cushy jobs and fees for the "outside professionals", and gives access to lots of savings to be skimmed off. Effect on general economy will be zero, effect on Japan Post Holdings we'll have to wait and see. But likely to be negative.

Oh well - there goes the public finance sector's secret stash which has always made them not worry about Japan's public debt being 240% of its GDP.

Japan unlike Greece, Spain and some other places has an economy that works very well, plus a lot of people who do not have substantial personal debt, rather savings. I always wondered about the chance of the government doing what they did in Cyprus - raid people's private savings accounts. Well, governments in wartime do at times coerce people to buy government bonds and things like that. So, why not in a major debt crisis.

I have had my Post Office account for 30 years. I suppose now it is waking up and I may need to take it somewhere else.

Oh well - there goes the public finance sector's secret stash which has always made them not worry about Japan's public debt being 240% of its GDP.

inkochi -- exactly. Which means that BOJ must increase its purchases of J-government debt even more -- and they are already the largest purchaser, by far. And the risk of that was articulated in a June, 2014 article in the WSJ:

"The interest rate risk has been transferred from the private sector to the central bank," said Takahiro Sekido, Japan strategist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ.

"That means "the relationship between the BOJ and the government becomes even closer," he said, making it difficult for the central bank to mull an exit to the current policy on its own.

Like I have said before, folks, gonna be a bumpy ride.