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Abenomics End Game: Thousands Protest In Downtown Tokyo, Demand Abe's Resignation As PM Disapproval Soars
Considering that Shinzo Abe's first reign as prime minister of Japan lasted precisely one year from September 26, 2006 until September 26 of the following year, when he voluntarily resigned due to diarrhea, the fact that he has managed to stay in power for nearly 3 years since ascending to power for the second time in December 2012 and unleashing the currency-crushing and market-surging policy of unprecedented debt and deficit monetization known as "Abenomics" is quite impressive.
It also confirms that as long as the stock market keeps going higher politicians have nothing to fear even if it means a total collapse in living standards for the rest of the population.
Yet even with the Nikkei pushing on 18 years highs, it appears that Abe may have reached his rigged market rating benefit cap, because even as the Nikkei was soaring, Abe's approval rating was plunging.
As we reported a month ago, "Abe Cabinet's approval rating plunged to 39%, matching a record low, as more than half of voters oppose the new US-sanctioned military/security legislation being debated in the Diet.... As his popularity has waned, Abe has become more and more desperate to keep support and has, for the first time in 70- years, lower the minimum voting age from 21 to 18."
The overall decline in support was apparently attributable to the fact that 53 percent of the respondents oppose the security bills being deliberated in the Lower House. Only 29 percent support the legislation, the survey showed.
Three constitutional law scholars said in the Lower House Commission on the Constitution on June 4 that the security legislation is unconstitutional. The Abe Cabinet countered their stance by releasing an opinion paper that said the bills do not violate the Constitution.
Since then things have gone from bad to worse for Abe, whose popularity rating last week plunged to a record low, while the number of Japanese citizens who disapprove of his policies has finally surpassed 50%, and rose to 52.6% in a Sankei poll, while the 47news.com poll shown below shows approval at just under 38% while dispparoval at 52%.
It spilled over last night when after years of growing resentment to their premier who panders to the rich, to big exporters, to the Japanese military-industrial complex, and of course, to the US government and Goldman Sachs (whose idea Abenomics was from the very beginning) thousands of protestors rallied Friday night in downtown Tokyo in a campaign of "Say no to the Abe government," targeting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's "runaway" policy. The protestors gathered at the Hibiya Park, Diet building and the prime minister's official residence, shouting "Abe step down," "definitely oppose war" and "protect constitution."
People hold up signs saying "No to the Abe administration" in a gathering at Hibiya Park in Tokyo on July 24, 2015. They expressed opposition to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's policies on a wide range of issues such as national security bills, the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade initiative and the planned relocation of a U.S. military base within Okinawa Prefecture.
[Photos: Imagine China]
According to CRI, the anger of the Japanese population was sparked ever since the Abe administration started to push forward a series of controversial security-related bills in parliament debates.
On Friday, the Japanese bicameral Diet decided to set up a special panel at the upper house to debate the security bills. The legislation package was rammed through the lower house last week.
The bills, if enacted, will allow Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to exercise the right to collective self-defense, but Japan's war-renouncing constitution bans the SDF from doing so.
Japan's former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, who delivered a speech Thursday evening during a rally near the Diet, again participated in Friday's demonstration, criticizing Prime Minister Abe for carrying out an autocratic politics and defying Japan's democratic system.
The former prime minister, who is famous for his 1995 statement offering an apology to countries that suffered Japan's wartime atrocities, stressed that it is very proud for Japan to renounce war under the pacifism constitution.
The security bills will be discussed at the upper house special panel from Monday. Latest polls showed that majority of Japanese people opposed the bills and about 90 percent of Japanese constitutional experts said the bills are unconstitutional.
In the immediate aftermath of the forced passage the controversial bills in the lower house Abe's approval rate tumbled 10 percentage points immediately while the disapproval rate surged to over 50 percent.
So what happens next? Unless Abe relents and pockets his military expansion ambitions, it is very likely that another massive, and career ending, blast of diarrhea is in the prime minister's immediate future.
But first, as we said one month ago, and now as others admit, Abe will do everything in his power to, well, stay in power. Which is quite limited, i.e., print more.
As Bloomberg reports, expectations for further BOJ easing may increase amid a falling approval rating of PM Abe’s Cabinet, says Daisaku Ueno, Tokyo-based chief currency strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, in an interview. Uen adds that market participants are focusing on whether Cabinet’s approval rating can maintain key 30% level amid possible passage by upper house of security bills this summer and ahead of upper house elections in July 2016.
His assessment: there is rising risk that BOJ will be pressured to ease policy further in autumn when govt is likely to struggle to find funding sources for its budgets.
Which reveals one more important aspect of QE: in addition to being the only catalyst pushing stocks to record highs even as the global economy slides into recession if not outright depression, it has become the new normal politicians' favorite and only means of holding on to power: if ratings plunge, print; if they continue plunging, print some more.
By the time Abe is finally booted out of power, peacefully or otherwise, the Yen may well be at 200 which in turn will be the catalyst that finally destroys the already careening Japanese economy. But destroyed cataclysm and demographic disaster aside, at least the Nikkei will have hit all time record highs.
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Abe needs to study Venezuela, and learn how to get some rip roaring inflation in the works.
Notice how there are no young people in the protests.
They are fuckishima'd
Time to welcome the Chinese overlords.
… in Japan, the young people look old !
Radioactive food tend to do that to you.
Probably too busy studying and surfing porn.
Nope, beeing NEET.
Just print more money, watch your currency go to 400 Y/D. You have no other choice, you are fucked
Why the fuck are they complaining anyway ? they won't have to buy any lightbulbs or other shit for atleast another 50 thousand years.
Protesters were said to encounter people of opposing views who "just looked at them like they only had 1 head".
wait a minute: https://www.facebook.com/hajimentam.tanaka/videos/418591118333926/?pnref...
She is a spirited young thing...
The girl with the mike and many around her are Koreans (North?) who are living in Japan. It's possible some of them were even born in Japan. Just for perspective. I am very opposed to Abe and his elitist connections.
Prepare for war, my brothers and sisters.
Is she what Barry might call a "white black?"
..or at least a pale black?
Abe s 3 arrows, one in the head one in the heart and one in the balls
I'm smelling a Greece fire;(
It's gotta be getting serious if the Japs are protesting.
No one takes up the arse as well as the Japs.
d'hawaiians ca' take the full fo'min beef enamah up in dere's...
Yeah..... Japs protesting that is akin to revolution over there isn't it.
Kyle Bass prophecy coming to fruition?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D0guj3OfOw
he is giving the left an opportunity to take over
mass immigration and re-shearing the countrys property will destroy japan
sad for the actual japanese people, japan will be ruled into japanistan
The Japanese better be working on their Chinese.
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission..
How under Zion's thumb and plundered is Japan? Well, Zion just pawned off their money losing Financial Times propaganda rag to the Nikkei in Japan for 844 million English pounds (1.3b fiat-dollars). Zion kept their 50% stake in their Keynesian mouthpiece, the Economist, and their Southwark building in the UK. LOL.
http://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jul/23/financial-times-sale-pearson
So many things happening now...the base is cracka-lacking and holes are emerging everywhere it seems.
Abe's becoming radioactive; too bad the rest of the population is as well.
Another OXI call by the people, yeah sure I bet he is scared after what the Greek government did after that!
the peons are getting uppity. how quaint.
Actual people in the streets protesting to save their Constitution. How quaint. Meantime America does this:
http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/kim-kardashians-worst-ever-ph...
Japan and Kims ass are showing cracks.
Actually, America is praising her "genius" idea to have an edit feature on Twitter...
Japan is so fucked it's not even funny. It's downright hysterical.
Well, at least they try to get rid of their trash.
We will see how they write this up as new owners of the Financial Times.
Holy shit the Japanese are protesting? Their government? Shit is getting real real, real fast if the orderly and law-abiding Japanese are erupting into civil disobedience.
Excellent article
Abe needs to eat some Fukishima seafood.
and wash it down with fukishima sake...
I've criticized Japan often on Z/H for being wound up dummies but looks like i have to swallow some of that venom and redirect it to USA and UK Citizens.
Looks like they don't want war with China either, Abe better run for the hills.
Another massive and career ending burst of diarrhea...
Perfect
Fuk-a-shima .... she luv you all night long.
Larry Silverstien appearently just doubled the insurance policy on a big building in downtown Tokyo.
Torches, pitchforks, hanging rope....all made in China. Molotovs not included.
I'm glad I visited there already; looks like it may go up in flames ... on top of all the radiation fallout. Sad to see it; it's a very nice place--good food, attractive girls, great senery, zero crime, clean streets, etc.
The world is getting so Phucked...
Abe is a Goldman sachs/Washington neocon puppet like Cameron UK, Merkel Germany, Abbot Australia, Key New Zealand, Harper Canada and so on At least some of the Japanese people are awake.
The people will be ignored, just like in Greece. Global totalitarianism is taking hold.
The Japanese are more pissed about Abe trying to Ram-Rod the "Official Approval" of the proposed "Collective Defense/Security Protocols" (read, allowing JPN to commit Troops and Weapons more liberally outside of its Territories), which are encroaching the limits of the MacArthur-authored Constitution (mainly Article 9).
Abe, like his Grandfather, wants to be the PM that champions the USA-JPN Defense Treaty as the Baseline for a broader USA-JPN (add in the rest of the 5 Eyes and NATO) Military Alliance.
The Peaceniks (who want to remain Vassals; and don't want the Self Defense Forces to be committed more than it is now) and the Independents(who don't want to be Vassals of the USA/Prefer to Amend the Constitution) both want a better, more descript explanation from Abe WHY JPN must change its Protocols NOW.
Abe promised it to the USA's Congress by Summer. A big mistake.
Funny thing, is that the "Abenomics Fail" Rant isn't highlighted by the Newsfeeds as often as it should be.
I'm amazed he hasn't been hung from a lamp post already.
All them dude's got a bankster in charge. What do they expect? They have to hang him.
What? Japan's gov't is a bunch of worthless motherfuckers just like the US? Pretty sure this is heading towards a global catacylsm, shits flying apart all over the world all at once? The soloutions our fuckwad leaders come up with magnify it 100x, if not more. Not looking good at all.
"...the Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade initiative..."
If it was about free trade, the details wouldn't be kept secret.
America treats Japan as its colony.
Rather worse as a Geisha (hoe)
where Americans go and have a go at their nubiles
Why?
And Japan's foreign & military policy is dictated by America
Because
Fear, what if Japanese also develop a nuclear bomb (Hello NSA)
And retaliate , they have a valid reason
----
Btw America will never vacate Okinawa