For those of us who remember the Japanese rise and subsequent meltdown in the 1980s and 1990s, what is going on now is like deja-vu all over again. Except this time it is on a bigger scale. Remember Yamaichi, Nikko, Nomura and Daiwa? These were names to be reckoned with in the days of [...]

Inflation is a concern for everyone, especially for those living on fixed incomes. With the cost of basic necessities like food and oil rising day-to-day, many people with limited incomes wonder how they are going to afford to put food on the table.
Apparently, the answer for some comes from a story in Japan: steal.
More than [...]

Japan suffered one of the most horrific market meltdowns in history from 1984-2004. Only four years after the last market bottom and on the verge of another global market downturn, it even may be too early to use the past tense to describe the bubble.
Yet, Japan offers a remarkable lesson regarding easy money and [...]

These are the picks of the day according to an article about what international investor Marc Faber is looking at. Despite the article’s bullish call on commodities, I know that Faber is on the record as saying that oil is due for a correction soon. And in Barron’s he mentioned that steel demand [...]

Now that it’s come to light that Barclays went hat in hand to Japan to recoup some of the losses from its credit writedowns, one begins to understand that the Japanese banks are in a much better position today than their western counterparts. After years of recovering from their own property and stock market [...]

The world has experienced three periods of extreme financial dislocation in the past century, 1929, 1973, and 1990. Two of these have been deflationary. While most observers have their eyes firmly peeled on 1973 and its aftermath, 1929 and 1990 are the scenarios of greatest concern today. These deflationary periods should be instructive as [...]

Ben Bernanke claims to be an expert student of the Great Depression and its causes. Therefore, many feel comforted that he knows what to do should in order to avert a repeat of 1929. But does he know how to prevent a repeat of the Japanese Problem?