Japan Is Risking A Decline In Standards Of Living

“You either have babies, immigrants or declining standard of living. You have decided to have declining standard of living. If that’s what Japan wants, do it. Seventy-thousand immigrants a year for a country of 125 million people doesn’t solve the problem.” 

- in Japan Times

Related trading instruments: iShares MSCI Japan ETF(EWJ), Nikkei 225 Index

How A Trade Deal May Impact The Stock Market

Jim Rogers gave a recent interview to The Japan Times where he commented the current state of the markets including on how a trade deal between the United States and China could cause a temporary, non-lasting euphoria in the stock market. You can read the complete article here: "American investor Jim Rogers warns of severe economic downturn and forecasts grim future for Japan"

Bear Markets Are Not Fun

Rising interest rates going to be the main problem and they're going to be serious but the trade war... Nobody's ever won a trade war and trade wars have never been good for anybody. So, that could be another problem and all of these things coming together. 

When you have bear markets everything goes wrong. When we are in a bull market everything goes right, bad news comes out and everybody says "Don't worry, we can solve this!"and stocks go up.

In bear markets, bad news starts coming out and people say "Oh my gosh! Guess what just happened" and then something else happens and it gets worse and worse. That's the way bear markets are. They're not fun but that's the way they are.

Interesting reading:

An interesting blog post from Peter Schiff on what he really considers to be the real national emergency apart from building the border wall: The Real National Emergency 

and also some interesting principles from Ray Dalio:

"Two people who collaborate well will be about three times as effective as each of them operating independently." : Principle Of The Day (4.5A & 4.5B)

And also why smaller groups seeking answers will perform better than larger groups: Principle Of The Day (4.5A & 4.5B)

The Federal Reserve Needs To Correct The Situation

The Federal Reserve after 2008 started printing money like never before in world history. Interest rates went to the lowest in world history and in some places they even went negative as other central banks followed America's central bank. The Fed's balance sheet alone increased by 500% and this all happened in 10 years.

 It's astonishing historically that this could ever happen if we were talking 20 years ago, 50 years ago or 100 years ago. If we said this would happen people would not have believed, they could not comprehend it because that's not what central banks and responsible people have ever done.

So the American central bank went nuts did something which has never been done we're all gonna pay the price. The debts keeps running higher and higher and now they're backing down again. The longer they wait to correct the situation the worst it is going to be in the end.

China's Economy Is Slowing

It is slowing, fortunately fortunately for China and fortunately for the world. When anything goes straight up without a pause is going to have a huge crash someday. The situation, the way I read it, well, you know what's happening with Trump, you know what's happening with the trade war and things of that sort. But also China has built up a lot of debt in the last decade or so and the government is now insisting, demanding and forcing people to start reducing their debt. When you go from adding debt to reducing debt, you're obviously going to have a slowdown. That's my assessment but I'm sure there are other things going on as well.

Paper Money Is Going To Disappear

Paper money is going to disappear and it's going to be on the internet but this is going to be government money it's not going to be anybody else's money. Money is already disappearing in China and in many countries. China's far ahead of the United States for instance.

While I'm extremely optimistic about blockchain and I'm extremely optimistic about the changes of money to the internet which I know is happening it's not going to be crypto currencies because the government's are not going to let it happen.

Crypto Currencies Are All Going To Zero

Blockchain and crypto currencies are two entirely different things as you well know. Blockchain is going to change everything we know, it has a phenomenal future. 

Electricity changed everything we know and put a lot of people out of business. Blockchain is going to put a lot of people out of business too but it's great for the world. But crypto currencies are all gonna go to zero, they're all going to disappear.