Wed, 28 May 2025 17:22:54 -0700 marlon from private IP, post #12040890 /all Japan is in trouble https://qz.com/japanese-bonds-us-treasuries-global-bond-market-1851782636 Japan's bond selloff is a warning to the world As yields surge and demand crumbles, Japan is becoming a case study in what happens when investors lose patience with massive deficits By Catherine Baab Published 11 hours ago Image for article titled Japan's bond selloff is a warning to the world Demand for Japan’s 40-year government bonds plunged Wednesday to its lowest level since last July, reinforcing fears that appetite for ultra-long Japanese debt is evaporating. The lopsided supply-demand dynamic followed a similarly disastrous 20-year auction last week — the worst since 2012 — and comes after a month of heavy selling across Japan’s “super-long” bond market. How legendary investors caught the interest rate break Together, the flops suggest that confidence in long-dated Japanese government bonds is breaking down, despite an emergency signal from Japan’s Ministry of Finance that it may scale back issuance of longer maturities to calm the market. And briefly, the announcement did soothe rattled investors across the globe, helping to push down yields across Asia, the UK, and the U.S. Analysts now say Japan’s shift toward issuing bonds with shorter maturities could become a global test case for how governments manage growing fiscal stress. But if Wednesday’s auction is any indication, investors remain unconvinced because demand for long-end debt is still deteriorating. And while it may be less consequential, a storm of chatter on X and YouTube (GOOGL -1.57% ) — where armchair analysts warn of a Japan-led global debt spiral — suggests concerns are resonating far beyond institutional desks. Here’s a quick explainer. Yields have surged and demand is evaporating Japan’s 30- and 40-year bond yields have recently soared to record highs (3.2% and 3.5%, respectively) after years of being stuck near zero. It’s a jarring move for a country where the official policy rate, per the Bank of Japan, is around 0.5%. Auctions are failing, with long-dated debt buyers stepping aside even as supply remains strong. What’s more, insurers are reeling. Four major Japanese life insurers reported $60 billion in paper losses last quarter, quadruple last year’s total. Nippon Life alone saw $25 billion in unrealized losses. Government debt is enormous and stagflation is looming With debt-to-GDP at 260% and the Bank of Japan already owning more than half of outstanding Japanese government bonds, the country’s leadershop boxed in. The BOJ is no longer stepping in to buy more. Inflation is up while real wages are down and GDP is shrinking. That leaves Japan trapped between raising rates and risking recession, or holding steady and letting inflation and yields run even hotter. Japan’s bond turmoil may offer a glimpse of what’s ahead for other debt-heavy economies Like Japan, the U.S. is flooding the market with long-term debt at just the moment buyers are growing fatigued and wary. Last week, low-demand Treasury auctions and a Trump-backed, deficit-swelling tax bill pushed 30-year yields above 5% and 10-year yields past 4.5%. While yields have since dipped, the bigger problem of too much supply and not enough demand remains. And if Japan can’t sustain confidence even after decades of ultra-loose policy, it raises urgent questions about how other governments plan to survive their own reckoning. Wed, 28 May 2025 18:25:06 -0700 Andy from private IP Reply #19141802 Japan is finished as a country due to its fertility collapse. Wed, 28 May 2025 18:38:13 -0700 marlon from private IP Reply #12513350 too many old people sucking gov't teat, also they live forever. life insurance biz is in trouble too Wed, 28 May 2025 20:11:50 -0700 whiteguyinchina from private IP Reply #10894758 This is coming to USA too which means interest rates will stay high and people will. E forever renters Fri, 06 Jun 2025 16:58:48 -0700 marlon from private IP Reply #17821714 https://archive.is/QocD3 Japanese queue for hours as rice shortage deepens Rising prices and poor harvest create political pressure for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba ahead of July poll Shoppers queue for government rice sold at Ito-Yokado, a grocery subsidiary of Seven & i Holdings, in Tokyo on May 31 © Issei Kato/Reuters Japanese queue for hours as rice shortage deepens on x (opens in a new window) Japanese queue for hours as rice shortage deepens on facebook (opens in a new window) Leo Lewis in Tokyo Published3 hours ago 14 Print this page Get ahead with daily markets updates.Join the FT's WhatsApp channel Within a few minutes of the doors opening, the farm produce co-operative in Atami, a seaside town south-west of Tokyo, had completely sold out of subsidised Japanese rice. “This will only last us a couple of weeks,” said 46-year-old Yujiro Osaki, one of the dozens of people who had queued up for a 3kg bag just a few dollars cheaper than the supermarket price for rice of the same quality. “It’s a ridiculous situation for Japan to be in.” For millions of consumers struggling with sharply rising food costs after years of stagnant prices, queues and the quest for better deals are now part of buying rice in Japan. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s government — an administration already unpopular after a near-doubling of domestic rice prices in 2024 — faces an upper-house election in July that analysts forecast will hinge on public dismay over inflation and the price of rice. The average price of a 60kg bag of rice harvested in 2024 has reached an all-time high of more than ¥26,400 ($184). While Japan has not run out of supply, it has yet to recover from a poor 2023 harvest that coincided with an end to Japan’s long deflationary period and retailers’ greater willingness to raise prices. There has also been some hoarding by individuals and deliberate stock withholding by wholesalers. The government has tapped its strategic rice reserve outside a natural disaster for the first time, and when part of that went on sale last weekend, immense, multi-hour queues formed at supermarkets around the country. Show video description People queue for reserve rice released from Japan's government stockpiles in Osaka © Reuters Ishiba is setting up a special cabinet committee to discuss urgent rice policy reform. He has also sacked his previous agriculture minister and appointed Shinjiro Koizumi, the charismatic and ambitious son of former premier Junichiro Koizumi, to resolve the crisis. Japan’s long-standing efforts to protect domestic farmers from outside competition, including limiting imports of foreign rice, means solving the problem will not be easy, said Kazuhito Yamashita, a director at the Canon Institute of Global Studies and an expert on Japan’s rice market. Decades of government policy have focused on shoring up rice prices to appease the critical rural vote, but rising prices have hit millions of urban families and made inflation a broader political problem for the government. Many criticise the government’s so-called set-aside programme, which attempted to raise rice prices by incentivising farmers not to grow. The policy only ended in 2018. “The set-aside programme was always the problem,” said Yamashita. “If Japan switched to subsidies, as in other countries, everything would change. Farmers would be able to afford to accumulate more farmland, lower their costs through scale and produce more rice. “Japan could have been a global exporter of top-quality rice if its policies had not been pushing in the opposite direction for all these years,” he added. Although Japan’s population of working farmers has fallen to less than 1 per cent of the total population from 4.4 per cent in 1976, they remain a powerful lobby. “The reduction in numbers has actually made it easier for the farmers to reach a unified political consensus,” said Kunio Nishikawa, a rice expert at Ibaraki University. “Japan’s electoral system means that a relatively large number of seats in the Diet are allocated to rural areas, reinforcing farmers’ political influence.” Ultimately, the declining farmer population will make a debate on wholesale agricultural policy reform easier, he added. “Even in the short term, because this rice crisis has become a topic of discussion for the entire nation, including consumers, I expect that agricultural policy reform will now progress,” he said. Given the size of the price increases, the government may feel more pressure to placate consumers, said Tobias Harris, a political analyst at Japan Foresight. “But clearly Ishiba and Koizumi are going to have to find some way of placating the producers ahead of the upper-house campaign.” Tapping the rice reserves may provide some relief, but analysts expect it will only be temporary. Recommended InterviewJapanese war on deflation Japan has not yet conquered deflation, finance minister warns Katsunobu Kato The knock-on effect of shortages and rising prices has been to create huge competition between the rice-buying co-operatives, which command roughly 40 per cent of the Japanese market, wholesalers and other large-scale buyers such as national restaurant chains and food producers. Many co-operatives approached farmers directly, offering prices that were locked in at about ¥26,000 for a 60kg bag. The co-operatives cannot now sell rice much below that, said analysts, without making a loss. In supermarkets across the country, meanwhile, prices of Japanese-grown grain are at record highs, shelves are empty or sparsely filled and many shops display signs suggesting cash-strapped customers seek cheaper carbohydrates from bread and noodles. In Atami, an elderly couple walked away from the farm produce store empty-handed. The cheaper rice was sold out by the time they had got to the front. “We asked them when the next sale would be,” said the husband. “They said they didn’t know.” Sun, 08 Jun 2025 10:25:46 -0700 marlon from private IP Reply #15525740 https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/05/asia/japan-birth-rate-record-low-intl-scli Japan’s annual births fall to record low as population emergency deepens Story by Associated Press Published 6:36 AM EDT, Thu June 5, 2025 A photo showing Tokyo's skyline on September 11, 2024. Yuichi Yamazaki/AFP/Getty The number of newborns in Japan is decreasing faster than projected, with the number of annual births falling to another record low last year, according to government data released Wednesday. The health ministry said 686,061 babies were born in Japan in 2024, a drop of 5.7% on the previous year and the first time the number of newborns fell below 700,000 since records began in 1899. It’s the 16th straight year of decline. It’s about one-quarter of the peak of 2.7 million births in 1949 during the postwar baby boom. The data in a country of rapidly aging and shrinking population adds to concern about the sustainability of the economy and national security at a time it seeks to increase defense spending. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has described the situation as “a silent emergency” and has promised to promote more flexible working environment and other measures that would help married couples to balance work and parenting, especially in rural areas where family values tend to be more conservative and harder on women. An abandoned school in Tamba-Sasayama after it was closed in 2016 due to Japan's declining birth rate. An abandoned school in Tamba-Sasayama after it was closed in 2016 due to Japan's declining birth rate. Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images Japan is one of a number of east Asian countries grappling with falling birth rates and an aging population. South Korea and China have fought for years to encourage families to have more children. Also on Wednesday, Vietnam scrapped decades-old laws limiting families to two children in an effort to stem falling birth rates. Customers browse kids clothes at a Toys "R" Us/Babies "R" Us store inside the Aeon Mall Kyoto shopping mall, operated by Aeon Mall Co., in Kyoto, Japan, on Friday, Oct. 20, 2023. The store, operated by Toys "R" Us Japan Ltd., reopened Friday after a renovation. Photographer: Kiyoshi Ota/Bloomberg via Getty Images Related article Japan’s population crisis was years in the making – and relief may be decades away The health ministry’s latest data showed that Japan’s fertility rate – the average number of babies a woman is expected to have in her lifetime – also fell to a new low of 1.15 in 2024, from 1.2 a year earlier. The number of marriages was slightly up, to 485,063 couples, but the downtrend since the 1970s remains unchanged. Experts say the government’s measures have not addressed a growing number of young people reluctant to marry, largely focusing on already married couples. The younger generation are increasingly reluctant to marry or have children due to bleak job prospects, a high cost of living and a gender-biased corporate culture that adds extra burdens for women and working mothers, experts say. A growing number of women also cite pressure to take their husband’s surname as a reason for their reluctance to marry. Under Japanese law, couples must choose a single surname to marry. Japan’s population of about 124 million people is projected to fall to 87 million by 2070, with 40% of the population over 65.Replies require login.
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