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Mike Tyson: Master Game Theorist
Submitted by Ben Hunt via Salient Partners' Epsilon Theory blog,

Everyone has a plan until they get hit in the mouth.
– Mike Tyson
My long-term strategy turned into a 12-hour strategy.
– "Survivor" contestant Dale, voted our in last week's tribal council
Reality doesn't interest me.
– Leni Riefenstahl, acclaimed German film director and Nazi stooge
Ben, there is no such thing as a good redouble.
– Grace Hunt, my grandmother, in a memorable bridge lesson
I’ve been wrestling with what to write about the Bank of Japan’s decision last Friday where … to use a ZeroHedge turn of a poker phrase … they went “all-in-er” on balance sheet expansion and monetary policy QE. It’s hard to find a middle ground here. On the one hand I could write a copycat oh-my-god-can-you-believe-what-these-madmen-are-doing note, but frankly I’m tired of being outraged, and I suspect most Epsilon Theory readers are, too. On the other hand, I really AM outraged by the increasing number of articles and emails I read where BOJ actions and Fed actions and ECB actions are celebrated in Leni Reifenstahl-esque fashion as some modern day Triumph of The Will, as if the symbolic projection of an unlimited, indomitable, and grandiose State were the highest possible achievement for political leaders. Yes, I just played the fascist card. I don’t think I’m wrong.
It was only after reading a quote from Nouriel Roubini – “They had no choice.” – that I had my hook on how to write this note. Because I think Nouriel is right, not in his evaluation of the objective parameters of the decision itself (I think he’s dead wrong on that score), but in how a slim majority of the BOJ perceived the decision at hand. I think the majority believed that they were forced to take this action, and I think that this perspective – when combined with some basic ideas from game theory – can shine some light on what might happen next.
In game theory, to say that “you have no choice” can mean one of three things.
First, it can mean that you have what’s called a “dominant strategy”, where regardless of what actions or decisions are made by other players in the game you are always better off to take a singular course of action. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sky-hook was a dominant strategy in the game of basketball. No matter what his opponents did, no matter how tall they were, no matter how quick they were … Kareem could always get this shot off. He might miss the shot, but that was totally on him; a miss had nothing to do with his opponents. Dominant strategies are, as the name suggests, typically the purview of dominant players, which certainly doesn’t describe Japan in the Great Game of international politics, so I don’t think that’s a big part of what’s going on here.
Second, it can mean that you’ve discounted what’s called “the shadow of the future” to the point that if immediate exigencies point you in a singular direction … well, that’s the only direction you can imagine. I see this a lot in reality shows like “Survivor”, where contestants must “scramble” (to use the lingo) in a desperate effort just to last one more day in the game. As last week’s eliminated contestant Dale said, “my long-term strategy turned into a 12-hour strategy”. That’s what happens when the future is discounted severely, and I think that’s a significant piece of the BOJ decision last Friday. Even if you believe that current Japanese monetary policy creates a mighty thin tightrope over a mighty deep chasm filled with mighty hungry alligators a few years out, that means essentially nothing if you also believe that the immediate future is a political disaster without doing something in a big way. And if you’re a central banker that big something can only be more QE. It’s indicative of the degree to which monetary policy has been politicized – particularly in Japan – as central bankers now suffer from the same extreme myopia that elected politicians have always demonstrated.
Third, and I think predominantly in this case, it can mean that you’re not even playing a game, but that you are acting in a strategic vacuum where you are only considering your own preferences. We’ve all fallen prey to this fallacy … we plan and scheme and strategize to the nth degree, based on our own calculus of our own pluses and minuses associated with our own actions … and it all goes swimmingly until, as Mike Tyson so brilliantly put it, we get smacked in the mouth. We get popped really hard, and as we’re falling to the canvas we think “Oh yeah, I guess the other guy had a plan, too. Maybe I should have taken that into consideration.” Or as my grandmother put it when I got totally wiped out by her bridge cronies playing for a penny a point because I was solely focused on the strength of my own hand, “Ben, there is no such thing as a good redouble.” Best advice I ever got.
For five and a half years the BOJ has had a clear field to take whatever actions they wished without fear of some other, stronger central bank smacking them in the mouth. There has been a coordination of central bank purpose and effort that hasn’t been seen since … the 1985 Plaza Accords? Bretton Woods? Whatever your reference point might be from an economic history perspective, it’s been a very long time since we’ve seen such a very long period of such a non-strategic, we’re-all-in-this-together decision making backdrop for second tier central banks like the BOJ or the BOE. So it really doesn’t surprise me at all that the BOJ did what it did last Friday. Like you and me and market participants everywhere, the BOJ Governors have been very well trained to expect that the Fed has got their back, that they can act according to their own narrow and immediate self-interests without concern or fear that their actions will result in someone smacking them in the mouth.
Unfortunately for the BOJ, I think that this happy state of coordinated policy bliss ended about six months ago. I think that they have redoubled this particular contract as if they were playing bridge with doting grandparents rather than chain-smoking, penny-pinching old crones. I think that there is a clear and growing divergence between the US and the rest of the world when it comes to balance sheet expansion and monetary policy intentions, and I think that for China in particular this latest BOJ action is perceived as an aggressive provocation that must be responded to forcefully.
So what’s next? I’m waiting for China’s response. I have no idea whether the response will be (to use the political science terminology) symmetric or asymmetric in scale and delivery. That is, the response could be larger or smaller than the perceived provocation, and it may or may not be a response delivered through monetary policy. I have no idea exactly when the response will occur. But I have zero doubt that a forceful response is coming. I have zero doubt that Japan is about to get smacked in the mouth. And when that happens the monetary policy calculus in Japan … and the UK … and even the EU will take on a very different shape. The domestic political dictates may still overwhelm the international economic consequences of extraordinary monetary policy easing. In other words, Japan’s politicians (which surely includes the BOJ Governors) may still have a scrambling Survivor contestant’s view of the shadow of the future, where they’re just looking to live another day regardless of the long-term consequences. But they will no longer be making these decisions within a strategic vacuum. And that’s a very different – and more difficult – game to play.
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Ben, getchur stuff direct and LOVE it.
Thank you for the application of the beautiful
Betcha one day in a moment far far away, there is an overwhelming cry for real assets.
Ripping off grandma, never thought I would see the day when the “honorable” Japanese resorted to this bullshit tactic you would expect from NYC banker pond scum.
Japan is forcing China's hand because it can severely impact Chinese exports with a much lower Yen.
That's a common opinion, but do they really compete directly on exports?
Honest question. I don't know, but it seems to me they are mostly at different ends of the spectrum on what they manufacture. South Korea, on the other hand, definitely.
I've been advocating here for years the position that China will use, when the time comes, its US dollar reserves to buy yen, screwing both the US and Japan and asserting for once and for all its dominance in the Pacific.
that time may be approaching
Buy them out of anything useful, with their own cheap scratch?
Gotta love it.
Survivor sucked.
When it came out, I watched the first show and that was it.
Had zero to do with survival.
It was office politics on a beach with smelly yuppies.
The "strategy" on survivor is not an organic strategy, but a pre-configured decision tree designed by TV show producers.
On a rain day this summer I caught a marathon of naked and afraid... That was hard core.
Fuck Survivor.
kasierhoff,
IMO China looks to be at a debt-bubble tipping-point - it may not take much.
They are trying to compete for higher value-added goods mfg for the spin-off jobs.
Time will tell.
There will never be another Mike Tyson...
Not sure exactly what to think about that.
One nasty, nasty son of a messed-up bitch.
And unlike Greenspan and all the other central bankers, no fraud - he was authentic.
And probably would have broken the neck of anyone who suggested their treason.
Also,
"I'll fuck you till you love me, faggot." - Mike Tyson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx66LWV-CCk (the end part, but it's all worth a listen to)
The BoJ definitely torpedoed the TPP though, with that salvo.
Do we get a repeat of the trade tarriffs from the 1930's.Probably.
How do you say Smoot Hawley in Mandarin and Korean ?.
That's an easy one.
"Son's a beech!"
My thoughts exactly. Japan exports very high value-added stuff like cars, car parts, integrated circuits, etc. I don't think they compete directly with China on those items. Now, they do export a lot to China, so perhaps a cheaper yen cheapens their exports thus cutting into China's GDP, but China benefits from lower costs on those imports as the yen depreciates, so...
I don't understand the logic of China vs Japan currency wars.
Japan's goal is to do whatever it takes to come out the other side with their high quality manufactoring systems still in place. They'll compete by making amazing things. They'll be able to pay for grandma if they can export
@kaiserhoff
Japan's chief competitors for exports are: *drumroll* Germany, then South Korea, China only comes in after those two.
Germany and South Korea occupy the mid-high end of the product spectrum with Japan, China is mostly in the mid-low quality range.
Japan and Germany are pretty much known for the same stuff, high quality engeering equipment, machinery, cars.
Japan and South Korea both are large exporters of cars and electronics, though truth be told Korean electronics has pretty much left their Japanese counterparts in the dust already.
China don't really share as much market spectrum with Japan in what they export as Germany and South Korea.
and China is Japan's largest trading partner.
Yen devaluation, in the export arena, is more a shot at Germany than at China IMO.
To me, its more about propping up the dollar as duitiful vassals. I think Japan doesn't care, doesn't mind as long as they can turn their hi-Q expoxting back on when the dust settles.
Not really an option for post-reserve-currency USA.
Yet another occasion I wish ol Jude Wanniski was alive to talk about this.
Not just mixed metaphors, endlessly wandering, irrelevant BS.
Note to author. If you have nothing to say about Japan, don't write a long winded piece that proves it.
ben hunt could be a prophet.
or not.
It never ceases to amaze me how situational comments are taken "out of con-text". One persons rhyme is another persons reason.
Sometimes I feel so in touch with humanity, and other times ~ so distant.
Dear Mr Cross
I feel that way, too, all the time. What am I doing wrong?
B.I. Polar
Just because we're skitzoid, doesn't mean they are not out to get us.
(tightening tin hat, gold went up today, disturbance in the force...)
I'm no Headshrinker, so I'll defer to Mrs. Knuks.
Al Gore probably knows MOAR about the Polar Bear situation.
Yes, Japan is not operating in a vacuum, and like the U.S. has sold out most of their production to China.
It's a race to debase, with Japan in the lead (leaving out Zimbabwe and Argentina).
When defaults come the post-industrial's will wish they had productive capacity.
Mike Tyson had a psychological strategy. It wasn't just "one hit.". He'll hit you with a HUGE uppercut first which will throw you off balance and THEN he'd " smash you (and your plan) in the mouth."
But once he went up against ONE GUY who "didn't have these normal balance issues" he started teeing off on Mike Tyson LIKE A BITCH. After that "he was just an ear biter."
Skyhook? Bwhahahahaha. You gotta set that thing up first...and his name was Magic Johnson not Kareem Abdul Jabar.
I was a big Lakers fan back then. Magic in his prime was a sight to see. How many times did we see him come on a dead run back up court after a steal...not knowing what he would do as he neared the foul line---drive on in? Took a real man to take the charge if he came in. Or would he pass off to a more open team mate?
Not sure who said it but it was told that you better not get caught flat footed gawking at Magic thinking he was going on in...lest you have that "behind the back" pass coming to you with enough "steam" on it to take you off your feet :)
Kareem was throwing down sky-hooks while Magic was still in grade school.
I thought that guy in the picture looked like a co-pilot in that Airplane movie.
PBoC prints 760 billion yuan last two months .....
http://economy.caixin.com/2014-11-07/100748095.html
for us it doesn't matter what authorities in japan or the usa are thinking. our ability to prosper depends on predicting what their response will be in the near future and also over the long term. in that regard they are 100% predictable. it is stupid easy to see their future actions. it shouldn't even be this easy but it is. i can tell you everything the fed, ecb, and boj will do for the next twenty years and so can everyone else on this board. there will be moar but it will never be enough.
“There are three things that are never satisfied, four that never say, ‘Enough!’: the grave, the barren womb, land, which is never satisfied with water, and fire, which never says, ‘Enough!’ Proverbs 30: 15-16
Well spoken Buzz. Therein lies the great trading conundrum.
Do you "top<>tick" the markets, or let the vultures enjoy the spoils?
Five: the Chewish banker's purse.
Do you even know what game theory is?
It is "the study of mathematical models of conflict and cooperation between intelligent rational decision-makers".
You can stop rationalising the CBs hereafter, because there isn't a single intelligent rational creature working for the central banks. OK?
They are all corrupt criminals in the shit way over their heads working with fantasy crap like DSGE models because that is what keeps the charade going for a little longer. Pouring their own jizz into their eyeballs while singing christmas carols make as much sense as their insane manipulations of their economies, markets and mediums of exchange. And sorry, the Fed, BOE and to a lesser extent the ECB are all going tits up when Kuroda eventually turns into a singing fat transvestite. It's called counterparty risk, doncha know? So they are all in it together or not at all. (Oh coincidentally <sarc>, the USD, JPY, EURO, and GBP are the four components that make up the SDR). Duh.
Uh, that was great. Damn near poetry;)
Right on!
I have idea about it.. No depth.
A Mile Wide... A Millimeter Deep.
But your observation on the deficit of Rational Actors in the Model was dead on accurate.
The RAUM and all the other models (based on RAUM) break when the Rational Actor disappears.
What you get is RND and CHAOS... Its not model-able in a way that makes sense to people.
Once society gets to this point the spiraling decay oscillations will be impressive:
Layoffs, Unrest, Etc...
You don't really beieve that's the point of what they're doing, do you?
What's the tail that wags the dog here? Debt. Specifically, government debt. And Japan's got the biggest pile of it, as a percent of.... well, whatever you want to lay that debt on top of as the divisor.
When you think it's insanity, you're not seeing the real game being played clearly. Japan's government is doing what it thinks it has to in order to survive. Prosperity and the well being of it's citizens is a grim joke. They are in gvernment survival mode, not fix the economy mode.
They're buying their own bonds to the point the JGB market, the second most "liquid" in the world outside of USTs, goes DAYS without a trade in the secondary market. Now they're buying stocks in companies directly through the government pension system.
Think.... why? Insanity or stupidity is not the correct answer.
The BoJ is in "self preservation" mode. The escape pods are being loaded.
Yen got it right and so did you. To me, a debt-as-asset based economy is an insane concept to begin with, yet this is the fundamental basis for banking and the eventual product of central banking. All that the fiat currency represents now is untenable debt for future generations. I don't merely think so, I know their actions are criminal (criminally insane?) in direct contravention to their supposed reason for being.
Of course it is out of self-preservation, but I disagree that they are doing it with the self-preservation of their citizens in mind. If they really cared about their citizens' survival, they would be buying up PMs while their currency still had value, they would have gone through the default process, taken the short term pain of being illiquid and built their country up with better foundations. They are in a strong position to do it too - they don't need a lot of investments in infrastructure to come back from the brink.
But they won't do that because they are criminally insane bastards intimately connected to the global cartel of CBs all doing the same shit, getting wealth transferred to the elites while their citizens pay for it by losing their store of value in their money every day. At a certain point, fairly soon, all the trust goes out and they will be left with bad quality paper that will merely smear the shit around the arse. That to me is insane and stupid, but I can understand the view that it stems out of survival mode. A survival mode that was made by the JCB in the first place. Yep, Kuroda is the little boy with his finger in the leaking dyke, but he is running out of fingers and toes as each day brings new demands for him to plug the gaping gaps in his market and government spending.
Look at how South Korea dealt with the same crisis in the 90's and you will see that the JCB did have a real choice not to pile up the debt and be in the position it is in today.
I don't know if any of that made sense, but it all came out in a rush.
"So they are all in it together or not at all."
And since they all move to the same choreographer's direction, the Danse Macabre will continue until one-by-one the participants drop from exhaustion, at which point the piper will pack his instrument and move on to the next assembly, the next venue.
"I'm going to fuck you 'til you love me, faggot!" - Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, et al.
Folks talk about Japan as if it's Abe & Kuroda playing the fiddle and NOT Ben Bernanke ( Yellen Proxy ) and Tiny Turbo Tim.
Post WWII Japan was infected by Ivy League economic alchemy.
And six sigma
What sound will the universe hear when 50 million Japanese all commit Hara Kiri at the same time?
Japan's is an 'honor' culture. One of their basic tenets is taking care of their elderly family members....how are they going to react when the reality that they have allowed all of their elderly family members money to be stolen sets in?
"Goose bump" insightful. Never thought that Japan might suffer an epic clash between the Japanese people and their shoguns, but, you're right, Japan might.
It's not theft, it's fraud! Learn it already. It is something that has happened at the moment the elderly family members bought it, not at the moment the actual loss of market value occurs. They took the risk of providing for their own retirement in their own hands, but at the same time gave the control over to centralized institutions. They haven't set up some sort of an agreement that can live through generations.
Fraud like this always requires the victim's cooperation, thus no fraud victim can ever be entirely free from blame, unlike other types of crime. I think many Japanese will have to think again when this basic tenet actually has to apply. They'll figure it out.
Nobody cares about their moral or juridical responsibility here. They care about their material comfort. This war will be fought first in the marketplace, secondly in the diet, and ultimately with poisons and bullets.
The Japanese government has wasted the vast savings and resources of the japanese people. They have done it over 25 years in a Keynesian experiment; trying to stimulate the economy. We are on QE 8 or higher that started in 2001. The Japanese government wasted the vast savings of the Japanese people but it did not restart the economy. Is there a message there for The Fed, ECB, BOE? Japan Post Holdings, the post office, at $3.8 Trillion is 40% of total U S bank deposits with 60% plus of its assets invested in Japanese Government Bonds. GPIF is the largest retirement plan in the world ($1.3 trillion) with some 60% of its assets invested in Japanese Government Bonds. They plan to reduce this to 40%. Japanese Insurance Companies are very large and have over half of their assets invested in JGB's. Japan's banks have over twice the deposits of the U S banking system and some 30% of their assets are invested in JGB's. Do you get the picture? Abenomics is a hail mary pass because they did not see any other way out of their predicament. Their solution is wrong as inflation would destroy the net worth of their financial institutions. Maybe the BOJ is trying to get them all to sell their JGB's to the central bank before they become worthless; then the central bank surrenders all the bonds. Is this a currency you want to own? By the way the savings rate in Japan has turned negative, the demographics are poor and they have a trade deficit and are concerned about their current account.
Is this a currency you want to own?
Paper papering over paper - kinda like a pinata.
I think most here know what will fall out once that paper pinata breaks open.
Japan is a scary place. Aging population with all its demands, declining productivity in real terms. What will all those old pensioners do when the shit hits the fan? Commit suicide? Seriously, the country is going more broke on a daily basis. Japan has few natural resources and "Fuckasheema" has screwed nuclear power.
I think war is coming for Japan, and if it's war with China, the Japanese are truly fucked.
From the looks of things, Japan has way more pyschopaths in power than China.
Isn't there a silving lining here?
Chinese can save the Japanese by offering a mass migration program to the mainland.
Russia is supplying the energy to bear the increased load.
They have a history...
The Japanese have a history with the US as well and not one found in US history books. People forget that Hatoyama/Ozawa were elected in 2009 on the promise of increasing ties with China and moving away from the US. Of course, the opinion of the public was eventually overridden by the interests of the US and Hatoyama was dumped. The Senkaku Islands would never have been an issue if Hatoyama/Ozawa had been able to survive America's push to eliminate them.
Thanks for some interesting views.
In the early 90s, Ichiro Ozawa wrote the book, "Blueprint for a New Japan." In it he laid out a plan to create a "more equal" relationship with the US and warmer relations with China. He also sought to limit the influence of the powerful and unaccountable Japanese bureaucracy. On the run up to the 2009 elections, he and other business and diplomatic leaders spent time in China laying the groundwork for cooperation once his DPJ party came to power. The DPJ campaign manifesto was largely based on Ozawa's book.
On the agenda was renewing discussions about joint exploration of the seabed around the Senkaku Islands, discussions that had been ongoing in the mid-2000s until abruptly and inexplicably ending (the Western-aligned source claimed that China ended the discussions but other sources point the finger at Japan under the influence of the US).
Obama snubbed Hatoyama, the heir to the Bridgestone Tire Co., early and often. The Washington Post called him "loopy." He tried to move a planned naval air base from Okinawa to another location in Japan over the objections of the US. In the meantime, Ozawa, the party leader and brains behind the agenda was saddled with corruption charges over what could be described as business as usual for most politicians and bureaucrats in Japan. The bureaucracy, including powerful so-called US-hands, laid siege on Hatoyama and Ozawa and the compliant Japanese media piled on. Less than a year after Hatoyama took power, he was forced to resign.
Taking his place was Naoto Kan whose first order of business was to agree to the base construction in Okinawa and decree that the US/Japan relationship was the backbone of Japan's foreign policy in Asia. Of course, less than a year later Fukushima melted down and Kan's tepid response to the victims of the disaster while protecting the nuclear industry proved too much for him.
Ultimately, the Japanese will realize that their salvation lies in Asia as you have described. The West is a loser for them. Despite the war rhetoric between Japan and China (encouraged by Obama's "Pivot to Asia") Japan is logging its highest tourist year. Notable is that the largest number of tourists come from China. The call within Japan to make amends with China is growing louder among the academic and political class. Abe and Xi meet next week at APEC...hopefully.
apec is going to be tpp 24/7. that is the usa's answer to chinese pacific consolidation.
funny how the missing dynamic here is a common competitor bonding the south pacific and southeast asia together with china against the usa. the tpp is just more usa economic bullying therefore more fuel for the fire. these countries don't want china to take over the role of the usa but they want an alternative that gives them more freedom, you know, sovereignity. normally these countries have historically feared china more than they ever feared the japanese or the other colonial powers, for that matter. joining with china in a strength in numbers bloc to counter usa hegemoney trumps all past considerations.
The TPP is the final dagger in the heart of Japan sovereignty to be sure. China is the key, more so now that Russia and China share interests against the West. Done correctly, China could take the lead in Asia without threatening anyone in the area. South Korea would be on board with that and Japan would seal the deal. Japan has a lot of leverage over the West as regards China but America's influence on the Jp political and bureaucratic class stifles it. Perhaps the abject failure of Abenomics will lead to changing attitudes.
Nuclear power was screwed without Fukushima
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/07/us-ecb-noyer-idUSKBN0IR0ML20141107
IMF, US encourage Japan, ECB monetary stimulus
PARIS (Reuters) - The International Monetary Fund and the United States encouraged the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan toward greater monetary stimulus on Friday and urged governments around the world to do their share to cultivate growth in their countries.
Calling the world economy "fragile, brittle and fragmented", IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde told a conference of central bankers in Paris it was "perfectly legitimate and appropriate" for the ECB and the BoJ to take unconventional steps to combat low inflation and economic stagnation.
U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said central banks "need to be prepared to employ all available tools, including unconventional policies, to support economic growth and reach their inflation targets," especially where governments have withdrawn fiscal stimulus.
The comments came a day after the European Central Bank ordered its staff to start preparing for bolder measures if needed to fight slowing inflation, on top of a range of rate cuts, asset purchases and lending operations already agreed.
However, Indian central bank governor Raghuram Rajan said whether "more stimulus is the answer" was a good question. More economic reforms were equally important, he said.
Lagarde said governments with healthy budget positions should do more to support growth, describing as insufficient a German announcement of an extra 10 billion euros in spending on public infrastructure over the next three years.
"In this part of the world, we have to repeat over and over that monetary policy cannot be the only game in town, and that there has to be a combination of sound fiscal policies, use of fiscal space for those countries that have fiscal space in order to support growth and rejuvenate that growth," she said.
"Clearly, the announcement that was made yesterday was in the very small ballpark of what will be needed in order to do that."
ECB Governing Council member Christian Noyer said central banks, including his own, should be prepared to buy public debt if needed to avert deflation or a run on sovereign bonds.
"Such an action may be vindicated if there are risks to macroeconomic or financial stability or even if self-fulfilling runs on public debt may be a threat to market access, or lastly to avoid the deflationary consequences of a public debt event," Noyer told the conference.
The markets are extended beyond beyond, all this comes at a time when the IMF is calling for more QE. It seems this might be a good time to review the reasons this is economically unsound and a bad idea. Remember markets are setting new record highs at the same time economies continue to struggle.
The policies of the last six years have yet to produce the desired and expected results promised, all this money has benefited Wall Street but not Main Street. As a consolation many economist, bankers, and those who have benefited greatly tell us we would be in far worse shape if we had not taken this course. More on the subject of how central bankers are in uncharted waters and clueless on how to proceed in the article below.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/09/central-banks-and-imf-clueless-on-how.html
Sorry, could not read beyond Survivor reference....
what if japan is acting in another sphere already, outside the dollar sphere. china and japan already have currency swap agreement. china and japan are each other's largest trade partner ex oil. japan knows the long term future is with the brics. china is the link. china knows controlling the pacific means getting japan on the same side. japan is looking for an exit from the current "security pact" (occupation) with the usa. and has been looking since the 60s. japan is in a real delicate spot. this is one of the reasons it is stalling on the tpp.
the "greenbacking" of the yen is a bridge to the next paradigm. you can't turn around once you get on that bridge. the change is near. those countries tied to the brics will do okay with the yuan as currency anchor(with the yen) and gold as the backup medium of exchange(and store of value). dollar countries will mad max or libyatize if you prefer.
"Japan is an honourable society" What a load of rhetorical nonsense based upon a superficial glance at their history.
These people are printing money to enrich the crony's friends who are holding financial assets. That's it. End of story.
Downgraded for calling the great Leni Riefenstahl a "Nazi stooge" which is Anglo-Zionist propaganda for German artist in the period of rule by the National Socialists. C'mon guys--it is one thing to see thru the neo-cons, but it is necessary to rid your minds of a lot besides. The Jews have controlled our perceptions for over a century now. Remember Freud? Bernays? The Frankfurt School? The NY Times as "Pravda West"? Etc, etc. The National Socialist regime in Germany was so transcendantly successful that the banksters thught they HAD to destroy it, even though some of them had helped it in the early stages (not in a very improtant way though. Read Pat Buchanan's Hitler, Churchill and the Unnecessary War for a non-kosher picture of events in those days.
I heard from two people that have been to Japan recently, one said they love Americans and he never heard a bad things said about us, the other, female flight attendent for United, was spit on and hates flying to Japan, she says they think we are dogs-strange.
the flight attendant is closer to the truth. there is a custom in japan that roughly translates into "two faced" for an american understanding. it works the same way only the japanese at really funny about how it applies. a guest or business associate will get the royal treatment and then be complained about incessantly when the door closes. you'll never know how they really feel until you live there and are able to read the real sentiment. japanese tv dramas always had a female character who would play the part with exagerated body and voice mannerisms. guys will have a lot of fun then dread ever having to meet you again.
there is a saying made famous by japanese travelers. when they see some of the harsh realities outside of "civilized" japan they may remark, "it is good to be japanese". when they embarked upon the meiji westernization period they sought knowledge from europe thinking the usa as a primitive country without history or culture. in general, the japanese are equal lovers and haters of all nonjapanese. they willl tolerate you more than any westerner(or chinese person) ever would, however,before they would kick you out of their house.
The falling value of both the yen and euro will reek havoc through contagion. For months the major world currencies had traded in a narrow range as if held in limbo by some great force. This has allowed people to think we were on sound footing as central banks across the world continued to print and pump out money chasing the "ever elusive growth" that always appears to be just around the corner. Recently several major currencies made multi-year highs or lows depending on the match-up .
The Fed recently whacked the dollar down but for how long? Because of weak demand for goods and most of this freshly printed money flowing into intangible investments inflation has not been a major problem, but the seeds for its future growth have been planted everywhere. John Maynard Keynes said By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.
While there are not many Bond Vigilantes there are a slew of Currency Vigilantes and they are ready to make their presence known. Weakness in the value of the Yen, Pound, and Euro must not go unnoticed. More on why this may be a signal that currency trading is about to get very wild in the article below. Please note, this may also be sending a signal that the whole system is unstable and the stock market could drop like a stone due to contagion.
http://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2014/09/caution-alert-currencies-may-get-wild.html
Christian financial advisor
http://www.christianfinancialadvisor.ca/
Christian financial advisors
Tyler Durden don't know Jap history, they will do whatever their govt tells them to do, even vote "correctly", as long as everybody is fed and housed they're good, and with a declining but overcrowded population housing is easy and getting easier every year.
This is just my opinion. I am not well connected, have no formal financial education and not exceptionally intelligent but have followed developments closely now for 15 years.
Before speaking of strategy, goals should be defined from a macro view. The apparent goal was flushing the global financial system. So far, job well done ( it started in earnest in Japan, around 1989).
The strategy has been to run the system wide open into the ground, again job well done.
The final step is to crash the major debt laden currencies one by one, apparently once again Japan was selected to spiral in first.
How does the strategy play out, we will see but the final score is already on the scoreboard.
Recall Coka Cola's execution on removing cane sugar from the drink? We were given shitty tasting New Coke until old inventory could be purged. Then less shitty tasting New Old Coke was introduced containing high fructose corn syrup replacing the former sugar. A master corporate strategy on cost reduction, and how the bonuses must have flowed.
I think we have had a shitty New Coke Economy for well over 30 years and now we are about to be given the New Old Coke Economy. Again, Master Corporate Strategy. Greenspan was the primary face of running the thing wide open into the ground, and now the prick promotes gold as money before the CFR?
Who here cannot see?
You never count your money
When you're sittin' at the table
There'll be time enough for countin'
When the dealin's done
According to H.C. Wainwright & Co.:
http://online.barrons.com/articles/picks-in-precious-metals-that-will-fo...
Thus far in 2014, the prices of gold, silver and platinum have disappointed. We note that a number of forward looking mining companies have been able to successfully raise capital, mainly during the summer, while continuing to execute on their individual and fundamental business plans. We do believe the recent selloff in the precious metals space is overdone and note that any potential recovery in metals prices could present opportunity. Further, given these past raises, there should not be any further dilution, in the near term, for companies positioned to expand their resource portfolios, which they can use to increase future mine plans and strengthen their respective balance sheets.
While the overall momentum for precious metals this year so far has been negative, we do not believe that this trend or disfavor is sustainable over the longer term. A key data point to consider is the size of the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) own balance sheet which currently stands at over $4.3 trillion. History of finance has no exact precedent on how a central bank would unwind an asset portfolio of this magnitude without encountering a devaluation of the underlying currency. We also note the size of the U.S. federal government’s debt, which currently stands at approximately $17.8 trillion.
It is our belief that the FOMC will not be in a position to raise interest rates to historic norms of 4.0%-5.0% for many years, because doing so would stifle the government’s ability to refinance short-term maturing debt and also meet existing interest payments on the national debt. The only longer-term path out of this quagmire of debt is to systematically devalue the U.S. dollar, which plays into the hands of gold and all precious metals.