Pushing On Theoretical Ropes

The Bank of Japan, BoJ, is in deep, gas-station sushi. So is the Japanese government. The yen is losing value and the BoJ is rushing about, printing money and buying up bonds or stocks or something like that.

TOKYO, June 14 (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan ramped up bond buying on Tuesday as its yield cap came under renewed pressure from rising global interest rates, highlighting its difficulty in remaining a dovish outlier in a global wave of monetary tightening.

The central bank's resolve to keep yields low has helped drive the yen down to 24-year lows against the dollar, as investors have focused on the gap between Japan's ultra-low interest rates and expectations of aggressive hikes by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

It's the sort of thing you'd do if you spent your days working on computer models of the economy instead of, you know, doing something economistic like running a business or driving a delivery truck. The only place things like this are going to work is in your spreadsheets.

Japanese people aren't having babies. They're producing abut 1.3 children per woman, so their population is being cut by a third every generation. Upstream from that, they aren't getting married. Upstream from that, the boys aren't chasing the girls. Just who is the BoJ trying to help? The place is in a cultural and literal death spiral. They're hemorrhaging workers and consumers and somehow bond purchases and interest rates are going to help matters?

Way down south, Korea way, things are even worse as the South Korean women are having even fewer babies than the Japanese chicks.

The credentialed experts at the BoJ aren't pushing on ropes, they're pushing on ropes that don't even exist.

The Gods Of The Copybook Headings Are In The House

Kipling, that old racist and imperialist, had this thing pegged over 100 years ago.

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Sounds about right.

In a world where people in leadership positions had some amount of integrity, they'd say, "We can't do anything to make up for the fact that we're dying off, so instead of printing money and pretending like things are fine, we're going to run things as conservatively as possible while you people pull your heads out of your rears."

Banzai!