Tokyo

Thousands protested outside the parliament building in Tokyo against Japan’s controversial ‘war legislation’ that allows the military to take part in armed conflicts oversees. The governments new security law marks a historic departure from Japan’s decades-long pacifism that endured since the end of ww2. Common Dreams reports: The controversial “war legislation,” a package of bills that passed parliament in September and took effect on Tuesday, reinterprets Article 9 of the country’s Constitution, which renounced war as a means to settle international disputes following World War II.

Seriously - how many more times can a central bankers' policies be exposed for the total sham that they are?

“The turmoil in global markets is making companies cautious about spending and also weakening global demand. That will be negative to Japanese exports,” Hiroaki Muto, chief economist at Tokai Tokyo Research Center in Tokyo, said before the trade report was released.

 

There will be two key themes for investors seeking to shake off the abysmal "as goes January" blues:

As reported previously the Bank of Japan, which not even the most optimistic central bank watchers had expected would unleash anything remotely as aggressive to prevent price discovery, stimulate asset prices and boost the exporting of deflation, became the latest central bank who, after a 5 to 4 vote, unleashed the monetary neutron bomb of Negative Interest Rates in the process pulling an anti-Draghi and shocking markets, even if admitting it can no longer boost QE due to previously discussed concerns it would run out of monetizable bonds in the very near future.