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Going into Friday, Japanese monetary policy already stood out as the most egregious example of Keynesian insanity the market has ever witnessed.

You’ll recall the central bank is monetizing the entirety of gross JGB issuance and is on a lunatic quest to own the entire ETF market.

But the BoJ still hadn’t gone full-Krugman by taking rates negative. That changed overnight when the bank took the NIRP plunge as Haruhiko Kuroda reminded the world that when it comes to maniacal monetary policy, no one does it like he does.

Image: MarketWatch

Japan has joined the EU, Denmark, Switzerland and Sweden in imposing negative interest rates.

The Wall Street Journal notes:

TOKYO—Japan’s central bank stunned the markets Friday by setting the country’s first negative interest rates, in a desperate attempt to keep the economy from sliding back into the stagnation that has dogged it for much of the last two decades.

BBC writes:

The country is desperate to increase spending and investment.

 

Make no mistake, investors didn’t need any more reasons to be bearish on Chinese equities.

Mainland markets are veritable casinos dominated by retail investors who until last summer, were enthralled with the prospect of easy riches in an environment where shares only seemed to know one direction: up.

We’ve long known that Canada, like Sweden and Denmark, is sitting on a giant housing bubble.

Indeed we took a close look at the issue back in March of last year and have revisited in on several occasions since. Put simply, the divergence between crude prices and the country's housing market simply isn't sustainable a you can see from the following chart:

Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Over the last couple of week’s most of the weekend reading list has been attributed to the market’s stumble since the beginning of this year. Importantly, as we rapidly head into January’s close, there seems to be little to reverse the negative tide sweeping through the market.

As I wrote earlier this week, this isn’t a good thing.