What Blows Up First? Part 1: Europe, 

2013 was a year in which lots of imbalances built up but none blew up. The US and Japan continued to monetize their debt, in the process cheapening the dollar and sending the yen to five-year lows versus the euro. China allowed its debt to soar with only the hint of a (quickly-addressed) credit crunch at year-end. The big banks got even bigger, while reporting record profits and paying record fines for the crimes that produced those profits. And asset markets ranging from equities to high-end real estate to rare art took off into the stratosphere.

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What Blows Up First? Part 2: Japan

Of all the crazy financial stories of the past year, Japan’s might be the craziest. To recap:

For two decades, successive Japanese governments have fought the deflationary effects of bursting real estate and stock bubbles with ever-larger public works programs. These prevented the collapse of the country’s zombie banks and construction firms but didn’t produce the kind of growth necessary to bring the zombies back to life. The sustained deficit spending did, however, produce a public debt that as a percentage of GDP dwarfs even those of the US and Europe.

So in 2013 incoming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe demanded that the Bank of Japan inject enough credit into the banking system to produce at least 2% inflation. The bank acquiesced and in the space of less than a year more than doubled the size of its balance sheet by buying bonds on the open market with newly-created currency.

Now here’s where it gets strange.

….continue reading HERE