Japan Building Construction Starts November 2007

Japan's housing starts fell for a fourth month in October as stricter rules for obtaining building permits and the impact of the US sub-prime credit tightening continue to place a burden on economic growth. Starts tumbled 35 percent in November from a year earlier after falling 44 percent in September, the Ministry of Land Infrastructure and Transport said in Tokyo today. The government eased

Japan Retail Prices, Employment, Income and Consumption October 2007

Japan's economy showed its first signs of inflation this year after food and energy prices both rose in October. Core consumer prices, which exclude fresh food, climbed 0.1 percent in October from a year earlier, the first increase since December 2006, the statistics bureau said today in Tokyo, while the index excluding food and energy continued to fall (by 0,3%).Claus - who is busy with exams

Japan Industrial Output October 2007

Well, industrial output in Japan seems to be performing well at the moment since Japan's industrial production rose to a record in October. Output rose a seasonally adjusted 1.6 percent from a month earlier, when it fell 1.4 percent, the Trade Ministry said in Tokyo today. The year on year rise was 3.5 percent.Clearly this would seem to indicate that exports continue to hold up well, although

Japan Retail Sales October 2007, the Employment Outlook and the Topix Bear Market

Japan's retail sales rose at the fastest pace in more than a year in October as consumers bought new-model cars and record gas prices increased revenue at filling stations. Sales climbed 0.8 percent in October from a year earlier, and this constituted the third monthly gain, according to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry in Tokyo this morning. Well, that's the headline news, and here's

Ageing and Japan's Fiscal Position

According to an article in the Japan Times (based on data from Japan's Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry) the over 75s now constitute 10 percent of the Japanese population. This figure was 1.3 percent in 1950, when the government first started tracking such data, and rose to 5 percent in 1991 before breaking the 10 percent mark this year.As of Nov. 1, Japan's population is estimated

Moving Money Into Emerging Asia

Two minor pieces of news caught my eye over the weekend. In the first place Bloomberg draws our attention to a Goldman Sachs report about hedge funds shifting Asian investments out of Japan (because of lower returns and poor corporate governance) to other areas of emerging Asia.Japan's average return on equity will be about 10.2 percent this fiscal year, compared with 20 percent in the U.S. and

Japanese Exports and Global Recoupling

Claus drew my attention this morning to this interesting piece from Nouriel Roubini about global recoupling. Actually this post raises a number of points, all of them interesting ones, and some not as semantic as they seem at first sight.But before we get into all of this lets take a quick look at the latest set of trade figures from Japan. As Bloomberg tell us:Japan's exports rose to a record in

Japan Q3 2007 GDP

Well Claus will doubtless be commenting in depth on the provisional data which have been released today, so I will limit myself here to simply sticking up a couple of charts. Basically the headline news is that the Japanese economy expanded an annualized 2.6% in the three months ended Sept. 30 (or a quarterly increase of 0.6%) following a revised 1.6% contraction in Q2, according to data released

Japan Consumer Confidence Index October 2007

Japanese consumer confidence fell in October, and to the lowest levels in three years. I guess there is nothing especially surprising about this given everything else we have been seeing of late, but it is another data point.Japan in fact maintains two separate consumer confidence indexes, one is an index that measures confidence among households with two or more people, and this slid to 42.8

When Will Japan Intervene?

Well my dear JEW readers, as the global dollar sell-off continues in full swing against all major currencies we are moving into a territory which I just a few days implied to be wholly theoretical. You see, while indeed the USD has been trading at all time lows against Sterling and the Euro (to name but a few) the recent day's fall against the Yen has been particularly drastic. In time of writing

Machinery Orders September 2007 and the Economy Watchers Index in October

Well, this week really has been a pretty gloomy and forlorn one in Japan, since following hard on the heels of the zero reading on the leading indicators index we now have the September machinery orders data, and the latest edition of the Economy Watchers index (Japanese only at present). First the machinery orders.Machinery orders fell sharply in Japan in September, far more more than economists

Japanese Leading Indicators-all negative

Just to follow up on Edward's chart, I had assumed on seeing the news item about this index that the result of zero was due to an equal number of positive versus negative components. That is not the case...if you follow the link in Edward's post you will see that every single available component was negative. So the headline number is a bit misleading if you are not familiar with the details of

Japan Leading Index Falls To Zero

Japan's broadest indicator of what the outlook for the economy may be fell to the lowest level in a decade today, signaling growth may be in the process of grinding to a halt. The leading index was zero percent in September, according to the Cabinet Office in Tokyo today. A reading of below 50 is normally considered to indicate that the economy may slow in the coming three to six months. Since

Where is Japan Heading?

[This is a big one and if you are not in the mood I recommend that you just skip down to my summary which should give you the main thrust of my argument and analysis. This note also features over at my personal weblog Alpha.Sources.] I would imagine that the answer to the question above remains quite at the forefront of many an investor's and economic analyst's mind. In this entry I will try to

Japan Unemployment September 2007

Japan's unemployment rate rose in September for the second month in succession, giving us just one more reason why the BoJ may not be raising interest rates anytime in the immediate future. The jobless rate climbed to 4 percent in September from 3.8 percent last month and 3.6 percent in July, according the Japanese Statistics Office at the end of last week.The Bank of Japan had been expecting