Japanese Economy: Free Fall

The Japanese economy is in trouble. Big trouble.

While the easily amused were obsessing with choosing the best one line punchlines to describe the status quo posturing on TV in the form of another highly irrelevant political spectacle, Japan’s economy imploded, only this time for real. Unlike back in Q2 when every downtick in the economy was blamed on the Tsunami and on the Fukushima explosion, we just got, 6 months later, the report for Japanese machinery orders which collapsed 8.2% in the month of July, for the biggest drop in 10 months, over and above anything seen during the Fukushima days. This is exactly 100% worse than the 4.1% drop predicted. The reasons according to Reuters: “companies are delaying investment due to worries about a strong yen, slackening global growth and slow progress in reconstruction from the March earthquake.” Of these the Yen is by far the most relevant. And thanks to the SNB, the Bank of Japan, whose currency has suddenly become the only safe risk haven, will have no choice but to add balance sheet insult to economic injury and resume JPY interventions, only this time the duration will be even shorter than the last such episode which lasted all of 3 days (see below). This in turn will force all other central banks to do more of the same until relative devaluation, and the biggest currency lower, is the name of the only game in a few weeks. As for the winner: the only real currency which can not be printed, well, that story is very well known by now.

And just in case you were wondering “the only real currency which can not be printed” is gold. Or silver. Or platinum. Or palladium. Or iridium. Or rhodium. Or…. Well, you get the picture. Stay away from diamonds. If they were priced according to natural abundance they would be worth less than sapphires. What keeps the price up? The diamond cartel. De Beers to be exact.