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Japan Planning US Treasuries Sale
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So... it seems to be the beginning of the end?
I told ya...
Ha ha. You Funny. Ha ha.
Whaale!
Hey, you SOB!
Very interesting post.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrJZRBf_Y5s
http://www.generationaldynamics.com/cgi-bin/D.PL?xct=gd.e071221
Gold bubble anyone?
Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No!
I hope you didn't pay too much for you school fees!
If you did, you are fully entitled to a refund!
And it ain't over now! Cause when the going gets tough.. The tough get goin'. Who's with me?
It's from "Animal House." Foreigner.
Google. Downloading, will get it!
Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right
Do not panic. All is well. ALL IS WELL!!!!
I'm not taking investment advice from a guy who paid for 7 years of college and left without the piece of paper.
"That boy is a P-I-G pig !"
And everybody thought the Stork was brain damaged!
Whoa, you really need to keep up with pop culture from 30 years ago...
Road Trip!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZOg8bzVT5s (1:25)
"Yeah. Well, better make it 75-"
"OKAY!"
Road Trip is too optimistic. They made it to the other side of the creek in Road Trip.
The final scene in the movie Thelma and Louise is more realistic for current situation.
(Running from the police, Thelma and Louise stop their open convertible car near the edge of a desert mesa cliff.)
Thelma (GS and Wall Street criminal enterprise): "O.K. then, let's not get caught."
Louise (Fed, Treasury, BOJ): "What are you talking about?"
Thelma (GS and Wall Street criminal enterprise): "Let's keep going."
Louise (Fed, Treasury, BOJ): "What do you mean?"
Thelma (GS and Wall Street criminal enterprise): "GO!"
Louise (Fed, Treasury, BOJ): "You sure?"
Thelma (GS and Wall Street criminal enterprise): "Yeah."
(Thelma and Louise kiss. Louise hits the gas pedal. The car accelerates in a cloud of dust across mesa and flies off the mesa cliff into thin air.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z88U915uq8
Road Trip is too optimistic. They made it to the other side of the creek in Road Trip.
The final scene in the movie Thelma and Louise is more realistic for current situation.
(Running from the police, Thelma and Louise stop their open convertible car near the edge of a desert mesa cliff.)
Thelma (GS and Wall Street criminal enterprise): "O.K. then, let's not get caught."
Louise (Fed, Treasury, BOJ): "What are you talking about?"
Thelma (GS and Wall Street criminal enterprise): "Let's keep going."
Louise (Fed, Treasury, BOJ): "What do you mean?"
Thelma (GS and Wall Street criminal enterprise): "GO!"
Louise (Fed, Treasury, BOJ): "You sure?"
Thelma (GS and Wall Street criminal enterprise): "Yeah."
(Thelma and Louise kiss. Louise hits the gas pedal. The car accelerates in a cloud of dust across mesa and flies off the mesa cliff into thin air.)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z88U915uq8
He's on a roll.
You guys up for a toga party?
Toga! Toga!
Tora! Tora!
Such a classic line from John Belushi in Animal House.
What's going on with Gibbs at the WH? I heard that he said earlier today that the UE will tick higher tomorrow, and now he claims he doesn't know what the UE will be. Did the Marx Brothers take over the WH?
Yes, but wrong Marx family.
+1... now that's funny!
he said he was referring to the ADP report, but I guess he was just being a dumbass for not understanding that his words are listened to very closely.
No, he's just a a flatout dumbass.
yep, on Jan 20
Smugg Gibbs takes his usual stance: "Again, we don't know."
From Fly On The Wall:
Which is a lie because they know this ship is going dowwwwwwn!Back to QE. Need the funds to buy JGBs?
Due to liquidity needs? Sovereign default looming?
Watchers have been worried about Japan for a while now; their exports have fallen through the floor. We can probably assume they are gearing up for all kinds of sovereign "yard sales" to raise cash across the board.
Gads, imagine. Japan having a national yard sale.
Will be interesting to see who buys, and at what street price.
cougar
California did it (state yard sale)...aren't they the third or fifth largest economy?
I think we know who will buy the best 'cuts'....
and 'revenge' is a dish best served cold.
China? Korea? Pretty much everybody in the world has some reason to hate the Japanese based on the last 100 years of history.
Last time Japan sold treasuries, the US dollar went up - here is why I think that is true:
1. Selling treasuries, results in lower demand for treasuries, results in higher yield, results in people buying US dollars to get that higher yield.
2. They then sell the US dollars to buy Yen
IMHO, the positive impact of #1 is much higher than the negative impact of #2, resulting in higher dollars (and lower oil prices as a result).
The first $100 billion rumored to be for sale right now is probably a test sale. If the dollar goes up, they will gradually dump the rest of their treasury reserves in order to get some breathing room debt-wise, and to devalue the yen.
Until the IRS market blows up, the dollar may go up, yes possibly. There is however a certain threshold for selling treasuries, until there is an all out panic.
They can't give it away. The good stuff is made in China anyway.
If this is true, the US$ is toast. T-O-A-S-T.
What the fuck is "this"?
Will stocks go up on this
Or does that insanity stop with this. I need to know. Thanks.
Current PM Hatoyama and his buddies have no sence of enonomics, politics, or even jokes. They just need to raise cash without increasing tax or monetizing the goverment debt to achieve "30000 Yen for every child, every month" policy, and found Japan was holding tens of billions of US Treasuries.
The Japanese have a lot of creativity when it comes to Porn though. You gotta give credit where its due.
I agree to you. Would you like to watch a new porn featuring Ms. Mizuho Fuckshima, the head of Consumer Affairs Agency?
If it's got goldman sachs tentacles in it. I've seen it.
+1
Well well well...it looks as if we can take Japan off of the list of potential buyers for our Treasury offerings next week, next month and next year.
Someone just farted in the diving bell!
The U.S. dollar is toast? Could it be that the dollar will rise when treasury rates move up to meet demand failure?
Or will it trigger an immediate titanic offload of treasuries as every races for the exits? That would be so very bullish for the dollar, yes?
Only if by "rise" you mean "stop crashing".
Agree, there are cross-currents and complications. This thing could go any which way.
Yeah it would mean dollar up as selling the bonds would bring in dollars, which would decrease dollar supply and make them more expensive.
Maybe Japan wants to trade the dollars for gold...
Until they dump the dollar and reconvert it to yen. Remember the Japanese government still has financing needs.
I guess since their previous attempt to sell some USTs in secret was foiled by an Italian cop, they have no choice but to sell them in the open market.
How will we know if this is true, aren't all parties served by keeping it private lest someone other than GS starts front-running?
Yea, that's what I was thinking; the 'courier through Switzerland' routine didn't work out so well. Might as well sell them in the open.
It's a set-up. Watch gold plummet after Japan denies the rumor.
'Here on this mountaintopI got some wild, wild life
Here comes the doctor in charge
{he's} got some wild, wild life
Check out Mr. Businessman
He bought some wild, wild life
On the way to the stock exchange
He got some wild, wild life
Thought control!
You get on board anytime you like!'
-Talking Heads
'Gonna break loose
Gonna keep a movin' wild
Gonna keep a swingin'
Baby
I'm a real wild child.'
-Iggy Pop
'The distribution of price changes in a financial market scales.
Given that event X has happened, what are the odds that Y will happen next?
With financial prices, scaling means that the odds of a massive price movement given a large one are akin to those of a large movement given a merely sizable one. Such is the confusion of scaling. It makes decisions difficult, prediction perilous, and bubbles a certainty.'
-Benoit Mandelbrot
'This subtle but extremely consequential property of scalable randomness is unusually counter intuitive. It is often said that "is wise he who can see things coming." Perhaps the wise one is the one who knows he cannot see things far away. Newspapers are excellent at predicting movie and theater schedules.'
-Nassim Taleb
As a youngster always read comic books, now its' the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times. Both fluffy, with an occasional interesting tidbit and sometimes cool art; each medium presents fiction as fact. The latter though specializes in the prognostication of unknowns that through their presentation become knowns. The former usually throws an unknown unknown plot twist at ya.
Recently posted here:
'But there are unknown unknowns.
What we do not know we don't know is what the long finger of instability from the Hand will ultimately do to the markets and the economy that are still the home of the brave but alas are now a different land.
What we do not know that we don't know is how the continuing liquidation of Main Street and bifurcation of America will interact with the bankrupt ideology of the rich that had greatly succeeded in drafting the inner monologue of regular folks so that they would vote against their self interests and are trying to do it again.'
Would like to make the correction that these are known unknowns. Presumptuous and fictional to suggest otherwise.
Easy enough for an anonymous blogger to offer a correction, experts can't. For if they did how could they be experts?
Speaking of expert opinion, here are two examples straight from today's 'funny pages.'
First. Iraq and Afghanistan 'unsettled' about our announced withdrawal date.
Second, the financial industry 'unsettled' about an amendment that would require secured creditors under certain circumstances to take losses up to 20% should a financial firm fail.
Both show the conundrum of the government being 'all in' : they just can't ever 'pull out' lest the fragile system collapses. Of course the pablum narrative fails to consider that the only reason the system is so flippin' fragile is because 'we're there' in the first place.
I bet you one rentenmark Mortimer that by the time my newborn goes to college we will still have boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and the Hand will still be up the back of the 'markets'.
The first 'prediction' based on the imagining of Rahm telling Barry that if we are not over there and something happens over here he won't be able to cut his f%#$@&g legacy out of a wet paper bag with a steak knife and the second 'prediction' based on the Amerikantura knowing the game is so rigged that nostalgia for the good old days of the 'free markets' is for dreamers not schemers. 'Tis the rich man's burden it tis.
We speak of a mild outcome to all this, a new normal, as we stuff the pig on the scale of fate. We are so far down the rabbit hole Alice, so arse over tit, that it is quite plausible that the power law being applied here is masquerading mild as wild as well as its' converse.
What if the mild prognostication is deflation or hyperinflation with either A cascading to B or B cascading to A?
What if the Black Swan is just, hope upon hope, muddling through?
Never fast enough with the mute button after Santelli comes on CNBC, I caught one of the canuckleheads on Hee-Haw muse that golly gee willikers maybe we have to destroy the currency in order to create jobs! Destroy your standard of living to improve it? Nancy Capitalists in a Sovereign Democracy that are hell bent to seek rent.
And the Blacker Swan? Teleportation, room temperature superconductors, fusion ... something 'game changing'. that allows the game to go on?
Damn dirty apes.
Its' a madhouse!
And your point is...?
Anonymity is a warm blanket
+1
Anonymity is a potent tranquilizer...
He wants you to believe in the infinite randomness of chaos theory.
Gawd I love you guys!
"What we do not know that we don't know is how the continuing liquidation of Main Street and bifurcation of America will interact with the bankrupt ideology of the rich that had greatly succeeded in drafting the inner monologue of regular folks so that they would vote against their self interests and are trying to do it again.'
along those lines..
http://trueslant.com/matttaibbi/2009/04/14/americas-peasant-mentality/
And in case you fools ever wake-up in mass and vote against us we have these new electronic voting machines which our expert programmers say can give us the results we need to squeak by.
After all, there's no independent verifiable means of checking the results. We're always on step ahead of you.
Rumours are often cooked up for a reason. Again, are we seeing double triple reverse psychology head fakes here?
Is this why gold has gone parabolic over the past few weeks? If this rumor is true, then I can't imagine what the upside is for precious metals over the next few years....$25,000 Au and $500 Ag?
With Japan very keen to reduce the value of the yen and talk of currency intervention how exactly are they going to do this without affecting the dollar. Yes the dollar is seperate from US treasuries but any change in circulation of US treasuries will affect yields and fed through to mortgage rates,strangling any potential US economic recovery and hence the value of the dollar. The only way this rumour could have any basis in fact is if things are that desperate that Japan has decided to sever trade ties with the US. The other possibilities are that this is some sort of gamesmanship to get the US to withdraw stimulus and stop QE, which is unlikely or that by signalling something really stupid investors in the yen finally get the message that things are not going that well in Japan. I would be surprised if this rumour hass any basis to be honest.
Almost no chance this "rumor" has any basis in reality. With the Japanese desperately trying to avoid domestic deflation, why would they do something that would guarantee massive yen appreciation? This would be political suicide. Japanese manufacturers would go apeshit if the yen suddenly appreciated 20%.
In the off chance this is true, watch for a big spike in the 10 year treasury yield as a forewarning.
Eventually they will have to do it to prevent the people from rioting.
Good thing the FED tested the Reverse REPO today. Will they be the direct buyer from Japan? Is this what they have been bracing for?? Enquiring minds want to know!
It has such a clear plausibility it is hard to deny... could be indirect though, but still the buyer of last resort.
_AND_ they achieved $180M (not B).
That worked out well...
The Fed buying treasuries from Japan would not be a reverse REPO. A reverse REPO is when the fed sells treasuries to reduce the amount of dollars in circulation. This would be the exact opposite.
If you look at what the Fed has been doing as a form of money laundering - swapping illiquid securities of all kinds for cash, no questions asked, no strings attached - it would be reasonable that the Japanese would like a piece of the action.
Their business insider yakuza are no different from our business insider yakuza (except for the tattoos).
Treasuries in BOJ custody are as illiquid as MBS @ BofA. Certainly the Fed will buy ... as long as Bernanke is chairman, that is.
I think it's funny that all the smart- money insiders are leaving 'Financeville' in the middle of the day, bags packed and moving vans in front of houses ... and nobody is paying attention.
This rumor makes no sense. The BOJ just had an emergency meeting to try to stop the yen from rising against the USD. Why would they turn around and do something that would cause a crash in the dollar? I'm calling BS.
Japan selling bonds would cause our dollar to rise.
As long as they do not repatriate those dollars or cause a treasury run.
Why wouldn't the resulting soaring of Treasury rates cause the dollar to RISE, rather than fall? Anyone?
Your skills are weak Currency Ninja. I sense your inner conflict.
I'm afraid to say this, but the word "weak" is way too much over evaluation.
Feminism has killed us. Now time for more special rights (from the UN & US-one in the same) for women.
Absolutely correct. The natural liberal and socialistic tendencies of women have doomed us since they got the right to vote.
Please pick up your knuckles, they are dragging across the floor as you walk again.
Keep your angst about your mother ending your brastfeeding when you turned 49, to yourself, please.
Ps- I'm telling your wife. She won't let you sign on here for a week when she finds out! LOL
Making cookies for neighbors does not make you socialist. Didn't you read Atlas Shrugged? What a mistake to discount a brain because of gender.
but damn, they do make some good cookies.
@Anonymous - You are absolutely right! I can't believe that I never thought of that. It's the FEMINISTS that convinced the Japanese to sell Treasurys. Wow! Do your best to keep them occupied baking fine confectioneries during the holidays, and for God's sake man, keep them away from the Chinese!
One more nail in the coffin of the dollar.
yeah, but its an open casket memorial.
More like rotisserie cremation.
This is pure posturing. The BOJ is royally pissed at the Fed for not stopping the dollar beat down.
Unless they are willing to let the yen go vertical and make the currency war turn into a trade war, there's not a damn thing they can do about it.
You people are nuts. If they dump treasuries, rates will go higher, and the dollar will skyrocket. The carry trade unwind will be spectacular.
That doesn't make sense to me... If the FED raises interest rates, the dollar will rise, since people will prefer to save. However, if the FED is still loaning at zero, but interest rates rise, due to market forces, that will not have an effect on the dollar.
are you serious? I can't believe I just read this. please tell me you are kidding.
As long as they don't sell those dollars.
Maybe Ben B started the rumor so his policies would look better. He is testifying today.
You guys are thinking like rational people as opposed to HFT computers... hence, the move makes no sense whatsoever for a country that needs a cheap currency worse than a drug addict in withdrawal. However, the global yield monkeys have been out in full force since July. Maybe it occurred to the Japanese that a spike in the yield of Treasuries with simultaneous QE in Japan will actually end up with further JPY financed carry trade coming our way to the U.S. and cause rotation out of the USD into the JPY as the main carry trade currency; the JPY may very well drop in the mid-term.
Apparently the market isn't buying into this rumor, since the yen is actually down .9% today against the dollar.
those SOBs. We should retaliate by selling our Sonys.
The army just bought a bunch of Play Station 3's too.
Sony bailout make happy Japan?
If the Japs were truly to bail, we're done
Sell Treasuries,. recieve dollar,..print equal amount of Yen to go with it,= Yen in the bank for govt. promisess,.. just a thought?
where do you park the dollars?
Higher yields won't strengthen the dollar insofar as high yields can be caused by sovereign default risk. Yields are supposed to represent a coupon above and beyond the "print inflation" risk.
This is how it works everywhere else...it's why Greece's spreads are blowing out for example. Nobody thinks the bond is safe so they demand risk premium.
Any treasury yield spike will boost the dollar? The dollar IS the treasury. Last time we saw a collapse in bond values we got devaluations; the yield spike was due to default premium.
If JPY wants to devalue, simple...peg it
And here we have the answer the bankers want.
The race to the bottom in currency devaluation will inspire other countries to state this isn't fair and that most of the energy is being used on things that don't contribute to real growth - the solution? Every country pegs their currency, and we have a defacto one world currency.
Before panicking, lets see how much they sell. If this turns out to be their way of weakening the yen and balancing the budgets and they do it in earnest, then we will have some serious problems. Look for Timmy to visit Tokyo soon enough if it is done in large amounts. In truth, Japan is smart to do it this way.
By the bye.. kudos to, well, me! Look at #2 here:
http://themeanoldinvestor.blogspot.com/2009/12/outlook-for-2010.html
How does this depress the value of the dollar? Is japan not selling tbonds for actual dollars, would that demand for dollars not push the value of the dollar upwards?
Think of it this way. The housing market is going down, houses are becoming less valuable. Why? because there is a huge supply of houses for sale. And every time more houses come up for sale and add to the pile of houses already for sale, the price you're able to get for the houe goes down.
Same with treasuries. Add the treasuries they want to sell to the pile that are already up for sale, and sellers that absolutely need to sell will have to reduce their asking price. This could push treasuries even lower/yields higher.
Bad Bad Bad for the dollar and bad for the deficit, which is bad for the dollar since the Fed will crank those printing presses up until they glow white from the heat.
Am I the only one who would laugh his balls off if they did a massive dump of the treasuries on Dec 7? I can see Obama now... "A date which will live in infame..."
Here is a question.
Who would be the buyer of the bonds?
The question isn't who will buy, but at what price and in what currency?
Pearl Harbor redux, but in a not-so-subtle way.
Total Bullshit - neither Japan nor China can dump their treasuries without a massive increase in their currencies, which would destroy their export industries. The US dollar is the roach motel - there's no leaving!
agree.
Second the motion. This is a total rumour and any attempt to actually follow through would see the US$ carry trade unwind bigtime.
A soft unwind (fear check) of the dollar would please the japanese, no? Dollar strengthening against the yen would help exports. These rumours might keep coming...
A dollar-only transaction has no FX implication.
Not sure of the timing, but it appears the 'rumor' achieved the desired effect?
Rather like Zimbabwe Ben stating he would consider monetary changes to tamp down asset bubbles? ...then stocks plunged in the last 15 minutes of trading today?
They will HAVE to eventually, it didn't work out for the Madoff investors in the end.
Wait a second, Japan Inc supposedly wants a weaker Yen, and they are going to get it by selling dollar and buying yen? Now that is very backwards. It will cause a *rising* yen.
Unless of course they buy something denominated in dollars. Stocks? MBS?
as in...GOLD
Indeed. Gold may be what they are buying.
Add one more leg in the march to self actualizing prophecies. One can take away no solace in the behemouth level of debt re-roll scheduled for 2010 at >$2 trillion before the affects of deficit finance lump on an estimated additional $1.4 trillion. At the incomprehensible total 2010 credit reload demand level of $3.5 trillion, now all appearances ex-empire of the sun, the corporation formerly known as the United States of America faces certain permanent and irrevocable insolvency. Notwithstanding the economic and financial value of the US non-productive assets now significantly outweigh the value of its productive or contributing assets. The value of any financial asset equals the sum of its future cash flows properly discounted over time. You can discount negative cash flow from the day God breathed life into Adam and it won't change the result! This corporation should be plunged headlong into bankruptcy.
They are trying to raise the value of the dollar by reducing supply. Instead of buying treasuries they buy dollars. No risk to them since they have plenty of treasuries to cash in for dollars.
A dollar-only transaction has no FX implication.
I think Japan has no choice but to sell these notes. They either raise taxes or sell the notes. Damn the manufactures I say. If it avoids a revolt of the people I would take the lesser of the two evils. Tank the dollar and peg the yen to something else. It's going to happen sooner or later, might as well carpe diem
you die......Joe!
Ben to JPN: "You f--cked up, you trusted us ..."
I'm not sure why everyone thinks this transaction ends with Japan buying Yen? Sell treasuries for dollars (i.e., swap one skanky $ denominated note for another). Then:
Full stop there: Dollar rises, Treasury Yield rises.
or, carry on, and use dollars to buy gold or some other asset. Still left with pressure on yields.
Yields rising would cause prices to fall for other creditors of the deadbeat US gov. The music will stop eventually.
Yields rising would cause prices to fall for other creditors of the deadbeat US gov. The music will stop eventually.
Weren't we putting all our debt on the HSBC tungten card anyway?
LOLZ.
I am Chumbawamba.
Sell TBs, get dolla, buy gold, sell dolla denominated bonds, buy mo gold, sell mo dolla denominated bonds, and voila Pearl Harbor 2.
I'm not sure why everyone thinks this transaction ends with Japan buying Yen? Sell treasuries for dollars (i.e., swap one skanky $ denominated note for another). Then:
Full stop there: Dollar rises, Treasury Yield rises.
or, carry on, and use dollars to buy gold or some other asset. Still left with pressure on yields.
Stampede out of US Debt means immediate insolvency and default unless printing.
Douchinger - write a ticker!
We're rolling over ST debt...let's um do a thought experiment on what that would mean in terms of interest service costs in the event of a yield spike.
The gov't will either collapse in default or else devalue, just like last time. Either way I don't want to be holding their paper.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-glKGjp50Ug
the solution is a massive asset swap by the Japanese of thre US treasuries for oh...crappy JGB's which have parked in the post office as the only buyer for the last 20 years..hmmm..ok..Japan cancels its 200% JGB debt to GDP by supplying early redemption in treasuries..oh wait..then the aging population in Japan would sell dollars and treasuries..hmmm.. I know..lets run a massive trade deficit financed by crap chinese goods...oh wait..we did that..ok..I know..pay all pensions in treasuries and issue as many as we like..chit..we doing that already too..ok...how about stopping the clock..cancelling all debt and only issuing the level of debt we can afford..worked for Argentina and Mexico and Russia..no wait..I know..this is it...here it is...THE ANSWER...dollars are green..recycling shit would make everything free..yanno go beyond manure to energy and then we just eat the dollars til theres none left! Then the dollar will go up!
China to America:
"Can we dance with ro dates?"
This rumor seems false. Japan is really the only country that continues to increase its holdings of treasuries every single month during this entire year, including over the past several months. Why would the go from being a buyer to a seller so quickly? China appears to be keepings its holdings stable and not having any net increase in their holdings over the past several months. This assumes though, that the TIC data is accurate.
Any news from the Italian border to Switzerland?
Despite what one might think, start contemplating the idea of decoupling one more time.If Japan, China and India decided that they wanted a new Asian centric unified trading currency Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia and probably Australia would have to sign up and participate. The dollar is in its death throes now and if this final intervention in early 2010 fails, all bets are off until we see USDX around 49-52.
I would expect to see big moves to maintain the dollar drop on a steady pace to maintain commodity prices. The oil bubble is next up.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/energy-and-resources/floating-oil-tankers-here-to-stay/article1385585/
Japan is struggling against the falling dollar. This is a shot over the bow. Japan has realized thay can not out plummet the dollar. So they are sending a message that we will collapse the dollar and make it irrelevant. So US do you want your currency to immediately become irrelevant? Maybe you need to tighten up your monetary poilcy...When the 1st country rushes to sell Treasuries, its game on. If the dollar collapses, the bond markets will collaps, then the credit mrkets then the stock markets. Trade will be shut off. Stores will be empty. These guys are playing with fire. They think they are going to inflate us out of this debt situation but they are wrong. These foreign governments are now focused on how they can out manuever the United States....
This is connected to the new Japanese government wanting to start negotiations to evict the US military from their premises.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6915855.ece
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/world/asia/02japan.html?_r=2&scp=4&sq=...