Japan logs surprise trade deficit in August

High currency is an important deadwood cleanser. Stopping that and propping up companies with free money off the public purse just costs the country twice.

Here comes the 99yen = $1 again. More misery for us on £ or $ contracts or in the export business.

Obviously this is due to the Brexit uncertainty, and nothing to do with the way in which the Japanese government continue to run the country.

No surprise at all.

Those damn Brits! Everything would've been fine if they hadn't thrown the world into confusion by voting for Brexit.

A 'surprise' ?

Who comes up with these articles? Whoever they are they are certainly aren't taking Japan's demographics into account. Nor do they seem cognizant of the departure of Japan Inc to China, Thailand etc.The manufacturing base that Japan had has been hollowed out to the point of no return. Coupled with the declining birth rate that is seeing record numbers of schools and even universities closing.

Look out for more trade deficits as the situation is not getting better.....

Those damn Brits! Everything would've been fine if they hadn't thrown the world into confusion by voting for Brexit. dont worry the Brits will soon realise the price of Brixit in the coming couple of years, the EU will suck every job they possibly can out f the UK economy, afterall being a EU member needs to be more beificial than not, otherwise why would anybody continue to stay. And to those that think the EU is dead and will soon collapse, just image the Brixit turmoil , X10. I doubt that is even an option.

Bank watchers think that BOJ policymakers may try to kickstart the economy by expanding an already massive 80 trillion yen annual asset-buying plan. But there are concerns that the bank is running out of government bonds that it can buy under the program.

Noriko Hama has said that 2018 is the year where the economy goes belly up due to the debt interest exceeding the actual GDP. When that happens, Japan is finished. I'm going to agree with her.

Aly RustomSep. 21, 2016 - 12:55PM JST

Noriko Hama has said that 2018 is the year where the economy goes belly up due to the debt interest exceeding the actual GDP. When that happens, Japan is finished. I'm going to agree with her.

Sources please?

I'm an avid follower of all things economic that Hama comments upon and I have never heard her claim that, and I very much doubt that. Hama is pretty much prophetic, when it comes to Japanese economics and this undermines her reputation.

What she has claimed is that by 2018 Japan won't be able to service the interest on the public debt and that the Japanese populace will have to take a hit on their savings. She is also confident that they will take the hit on the chin with very little social disruption

Who comes up with these articles?

These articles are derived from the predictions of leading economists, of course. The same economists who believe that down is up, up is down. and that the sun sets in the east. The same economists that the government pays to provide whatever figures are necessary to justify more government spending.

Japan has done this many times before so it can do it again if it so chooses... manipulate the Yen and devalue it before they can't return from the edge. That edge is soon approaching and two more quarters like this will be all it takes to ruin Japan Inc. Perception is everything.

Those damn Brits! Everything would've been fine if they hadn't thrown the world into confusion by voting for Brexit.

Na, you got it wrong here, it's because of the Leman Shock, if Abe is to be believed, never a Japanese problem, always a foreign one that affects the Japanese economy.

And yet the government still has billions upon billions to donate in aid around the world. Go figure, something has to give.

Hama is pretty much prophetic, when it comes to Japanese economics and this undermines her reputation.

I don't mean to be overly critical because I don't follow Hama closely at all, but what I have seen she has not been prophetic.

Take her 2014 prediction here:

http://livedoor.blogimg.jp/mbhd/imgs/a/b/ab824d05-s.jpg

Still playing the same tune for this year:

https://brasileiro365.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/1e4b887e58686.jpg

Sources please?

Hi Gary.

I typed up her name with 2016 and got a link to a speech she made around march or so at the foreign correspondents club. I distinctly heard her say that 2018 will be the year for a collapse that would make greece look good. I'm sorry, I can't access youtube now, but that speech is what I got when I typed up her name with 2016

What she has claimed is that by 2018 Japan won't be able to service the interest on the public debt and that the Japanese populace will have to take a hit on their savings. She is also confident that they will take the hit on the chin with very little social disruption

I don't know if we listened to the same speech, because I remember what she said was much more harrowing.

@Gary Raynor

"Hama is pretty much prophetic..."

You'Re kidding, right? Well, I'm still waiting for Japan's rocketing "asset inflation", propelled upward by the BOJ's super steroid stimulus, that she used to drone on about ad naseum. LOL.

JeffLee

You'Re kidding, right? Well, I'm still waiting for Japan's rocketing "asset inflation", propelled upward by the BOJ's super steroid stimulus, that she used to drone on about ad naseum. LOL.

Says the guy in the know who back in 2012 predicted Abenomics was going to work !

You seriously don't think that Japan's assets are way inflated above any real sense of their worth?

BOJ.. the biggest holder of Japanese government debt.. now the biggest landlord in Japan.... and the biggest shareholder of 70 of the top 100 companies on the Japanese Nikkei.

Utter economic fiscal madness.

"BOJ.. the biggest holder of Japanese government debt.. "

Which means Japan controls its own debt; issuing it and then holding it. So you think that, say, Argentina, a big chunk of whose dollar-denominated debt is owned by angry American hedge fund managers, is a better proposition? Or Greece, with its endless German bailouts? Get real.

"You seriously don't think that Japan's assets are way inflated above any real sense of their worth?"

If you want to see such assets "inflated above any real sense of their worth," go to Vancouver, London, Hong Kong and a host of other "free market" cities, where middle-income earners doing essential jobs simply cannot afford to live in. Tokyo rates extremely highly when it comes to affordability, where asset prices reflect local incomes, and not the incomes of Chinese or Russian emigre oligarchs.

If you want to see such assets "inflated above any real sense of their worth," go to Vancouver, London, Hong Kong and a host of other "free market" cities, where middle-income earners doing essential jobs simply cannot afford to live in.

Have you stopped to think why these cities are so expensive?

Middle-income earners live where they can afford to live, top income earners live where they can afford to live, low income earners live where they can afford to live. Since feudalism was abolished, and people were given the freedom to go where they want, they go where they can find the most opportunities. And when there is high demand for anything, the price goes up. London, Hong Kong, and Vancouver are expensive because these places offer the most potential for economic success, and success is not a bad thing.

Middle-income earners could live like kings in developing countries, where the cost of living is low. But because there are no opportunities for success, there are no middle-income jobs. A part-time cashier at a London McDonald's earns more in a day than a surgeon in Cuba earns in a month. Which is why hundreds of thousands of Cubans have fled Cuba at the risk of their lives to reach a horrible, oppressive, free-market country like America, and why many millions of others from other countries have done the same.