Late last month, in what amounted to a tacit admission that nothing is working when it comes to pulling Japan out of its decades’ long stint in the deflationary doldrums, the BoJ adopted negative rates.
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
In 578 AD, a Korean immigrant named Shigemitsu Kongo made his way to Japan at the invitation of the royal family.
Buddhism was on the rise in Japan at the time; though it had only been introduced a few decades prior, the Empress consort had been actively encouraging the adoption of Buddhism across Japan.
But since the Japanese had no experience building Buddhist temples, they looked overseas for help.
That’s where Kongo came in.
The biggest event of the weekend, if not the month, was China's FX reserve outflow update, which at $100BN was slightly better than the $120BN expected (it pushed China's reserves to the lowest in nearly 4 years) but it was in the "no man's land" between the BofA best case scenario ($37.5BN), and the GS worst case ($197BN).
Authored by Steve Keen, originally posted at Forbes.com,
The great tragedy of the global economic malaise is that it is caused by a shortage of something that is essentially costless to produce: money.
Both banks and governments can produce money at physically trivial costs. Banks create money by creating a loan, and the establishment costs of a loan are miniscule compared to the value of the money created by it—of the order of $3 for every $100 created.
After "preparing" for over a week, moments ago at 00:31 UTC time, North Korea - which has failed to shock the world with some "news" for over a month when it tested a "hydrogen" bomb which according to experts was anything but - launched a long-range rocket which some say is being used as a cover for banned missile test. North Korea has called the launch an attempt to "peacefully launch a satellite." Japan, however, is not happy as according to initial reports, it flew over its airspace in proximity to Okinawa.