Saturday, June 30, 2007

Playing the Waiting Game in Japan

(cross-post from Alpha.Sources)As I reported a couple of days ago on Japan the next few days would see the release of a slew of economic indicators pointing forward to the future course from the BOJ in Q3 and Q4 (with the nature of the just released data I find it very unlikely that the BOJ will jump-start markets with a surprise raise in July). These 'few days' have now passed and we can now do

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Japan Industrial Production

The latest data on Japanese industrial production have raised some eyebrows. Below I am putting up a quick excel chart of manufacturing and mining output on a monthly basis since April 2006 I have just knocked out. (The raw data can be accessed from here).The trend should be reasonably clear, and certainly the recent wave seems to have peaked back in December last year. Of course, as Claus was

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

Tokyo real estate still too expensive

Burbed came up with this link:Japanese find sleep, shelter in cyber cafes Men make use of the internet service in the private rooms of an internet cafe in Tokyo May 2, 2007. Some low-wage earning young people who cannot afford apartments in Tokyo are choosing to live in internet cafes, which are cheaper than a hotel and even offer showers, microwaves and large libraries of manga to read. Picture

Where There is Hope ...

Cross-post from Alpha.SourcesSmall things matter in terms of the Japanese economy and especially when it comes to the indicators for domestic demand and inflation. As such, the next couple of days will see important releases on the Japanese economy which, according to the forecasts, are going to come out on the positive side thus further bolstering the BOJ towards a potential hike in August or

Friday, June 22, 2007

Toyota and Honda increasing factory capacity in Japan

Brad Setser points to a WSJ article to the effect that "Toyota has invested three times as much in Japan as in North America over the past three years. Honda is building its first auto factory in Japan in nearly three decades. " The context of Setser's discussion is that exchange rates result in greater profits for these two companies from cars manufactured in Japan and sold in the US than from

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Summer Bonus Season

Just following up on Scott's point here, there is more news from Bloomberg this morning:The yen traded near the weakest in more than four years versus the dollar and a record low against the euro on speculation Japanese workers being paid bonuses this month will invest overseas for higher returns. Finance companies will market more than 1.5 trillion yen ($12.1 billion) of foreign-currency

Japan's Shifting Trade Surplus

The big headline today is the increase in Japan's trade surplus, but the important news behind the headline is the shifting composition of Japan's exports. According to the Financial Times:Japan’s exports rose 15.1 per cent to a record high for May, but brisk imports and sluggish shipments to the US meant the trade surplus rose a slower-than-expected 9.3 per cent from a year earlier.Exports rose

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

More on Japanese retail investors participating in carry trade

According to Marketwatch, "Analysts said the yen has also been pressured by growing appetites for risk among Japanese individuals who are borrowing in yen to fund positions in higher-yielding currencies. Currency trading by Japanese individuals rose to record $11 billion per day in the fiscal year ended in March -- a threefold increase from a year earlier, according to figures from Tokyo firm

Japan's Low Fertility

Earlier this month the Japanese Health Ministry revealed that the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) recorded in Japan rose slightly - to 1.32 babies per woman - in 2006, a figure which is up from the record low ever of 1.26 recorded in 2005.Japan's fertility rate rose last year for the first time in six years in 2006, while the number of suicides fell below the 30,000-case mark for the first time in

Monday, June 18, 2007

Japan's retail carry trade

It seems that Claus and I have been thinking along the same lines recently, that the increase in currency trading by individuals in Japan is particularly noteworthy. One fact from the Bloomberg story that Claus pointed out is that "In Japan, individuals have opened 600,000 so-called margin trading accounts at brokerages that lend money for currency bets, 80 percent more than a year ago,

Those Savvy Japanese Housewives

(Cross-post from Alpha.Sources) It has been a while since I have last reported on Japan so let us start with the basics which you may or may not already know. Last week the BOJ chose, as expected, to hold yet again on the continuing dim outlook for wages and inflation in Japan. Economic momentum as measured by investment and domestic demand seems to be doing fairly well but at the end of the

Monday, June 11, 2007

Outflow of yen from Japanese savers accelerating

That is according to Bloomberg, which has a story today describing how, referring to yen flows: ``It's reaching the point where the central bank must take rate action,'' says Hiromichi Shirakawa, a former Bank of Japan official and now chief economist at Credit Suisse Group in Tokyo. ``Capital is flowing out of Japan too quickly, making the economy vulnerable to currency fluctuations.''Driving

Sunday, June 3, 2007

Unemployment in Japan

Now as we have been noting here on JEW over the last months, unemployment in Japan is trending steadily down, as can bee sen in the graph below which comes from the Labour Force Survey of the Japan Statistics bureau:Now in part the decline in unemployment is a natural response to the - largely export driven - extended economic boom Japan has been enjoying recently, but this is certainly not the

Friday, June 1, 2007

Immigration In Japan

Since the Japanese labour market is tightening all the time, and this process must have a limit given the declining labour force issue, I thought I'd take a look at the Japan immigration situation, and I found the graph I am posting below, which makes pretty sombre viewing. I think it shows what they call "flatlining".Net Migration Compared. EU, USA and JapanSource: OECD, Labour Force