Japan has been in financial decline for a while now, but recently their situation has gotten much worse. Glenn details why our biggest ally in Asia may be on the brink of financial collapse, what it means for America’s own economy and financial stability, and how both the U.S. and Japan are facing an inflation ‘death spiral.’ It may be time to PREPARE FOR IMPACT.

Transcript

Below is a rush transcript that may contain errors

Glenn: All right. So, Stu, I need you to stay with me here. Because this is -- this is probably a story that no one is paying attention to. And I think it's really important. Japan said that they would be the first great reset full adaptor. Okay?

And that made me curious, a few months ago. When I found that out, hmm. Why?

Well, I now know why. They are in serious, serious financial straits. They have been for a while.

This is not a new problem. This has been going on, the decline of Japan, since the '90s.

Well, I read a story, what was it, Thursday or Friday?

That the Japanese yen, has fallen to its lowest level against the dollar, in more than 20 years.

This means, it takes more yen to buy a dollar. As of Friday, the 22nd, it was more than 125 yen to buy a dollar.

Normally, only people who are like trading in currencies, actually care about this.

But the why behind the crash, is why you need to care.

Okay?

Because it could very easily lead to the crash of our Treasury bonds. And let me explain. Treasury bonds. Our debt.

We issued Treasury bonds every time our government spends money. And we have trillions of these out. And nobody is buying them.

Okay? The days of us living high on the hog. And somebody will take this crap. Those days are over, okay?

The Japanese are the largest holder of US Treasury bonds in the world. They hold more than China. More than any European country.

More than any other entity, except the U.S. Federal Reserve.

Why does the U.S. Federal Reserve own so many treasury bonds? They never did that before.

They had to start doing it, because no one in the world would -- would raise their hand in auction and say, I'll take some of that American crap. Okay?

So no one was buying it. So the fed put trillions of dollars of our debt, and they bought that debt by printing money. Okay?

Japan is number two. Japan holds $2 trillion of our debt. Now, the story that I read, on Thursday or Friday, was that the prime minister had called Janet Yellen and called the president and said, we need a bailout. You have to help us out.

You have to shore up the yen, or we are done. Well, we didn't do that. We said, we can't do that. And there's a couple of reasons why we can't.

So with them being the largest holder, they've been -- they are -- they're playing a game here. It's a shell game. The whole world is on this shell game. They have $2 trillion in Treasuries, and they're forced to sell those bonds to shore up their currency. This would cause our fed to print more money, to put billions -- or, trillions into buying those bonds, which would now be on the market. So inflation could go to 20 percent.

That's the story you'll hear, if you pay attention to Bloomberg. But that's -- that's just a small part, of what is going on.

We know that Japan has the worst demographics in the world. It's the oldest population in the developed world.

3.4 retirees over the age of 55, for every one worker, under the age of 30. So that one worker, is expected to work, to support 3.4 people.

Nobody is entering the work force. If you're young, you're not going into the marketplace. The Japanese stopped having kids, after the Asian miracle ended in 99, and Japan's economy crashed. Remember the story, where they can't get guys to even be interested in sex. Consider this.

Toyota and Honda. The two best made. Best-selling brands in the world. Right?

Testaments to Japanese ingenuity and manufacturing.

Except, the Japanese demographics are so upside down, virtually no Hondas or Toyotas, are actually made in Japan, anymore.

More than a decade ago, both companies realized, they think, find any workers, and that's why they're here in the US. Indonesia, and the Philippines.

These companies were not alone. In the past 20 years, Japan has lost almost its entire manufacturing base.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Save a few technology sectors, like mother boards and micro chips. Everything else, is not made in Japan.

This means, their taxable income is gone. And as they move overseas, where labor is available. And cost is lower. Some of the profits flow over to Japan. But most of the revenue generated. Stays in countries are manufacturing is occurring. So they had to make up the shortfall. What do you do?

They had a plan. They started selling more and more Japanese bonds, to cover their deficits, between the massive welfare state and the tax base.

So they -- they just started selling bonds.

This is where we're at.

Japan has the -- the highest personal income taxes, in the G7. It also has the highest debt to GDP in the developed world.

Our debt to GDP is 130 percent. That's the highest we've seen, since World War II. Japan's debt to GDP is 253 percent.

Okay? That's double ours. So their economy was collapsing. They had to sell bonds. Then they got to the place we are. And they were like, nobody is buying our bonds.

So what did they do?

Now, remember, this just was stated by the Biden administration, as something that is coming our way. What they did, so the Coventry wouldn't collapse. They went and they sold Japanese bonds to investors in Japan, at 0 percent interest.

Now, why would a company take something where I'm not going to grow my money, and lock my money into a Japanese bond for ten years?

Why would you do that?

Because the government mandated it. If you were a retirement fund, you had anything to do with Japan, you were investing, you had to put a percentage into government bonds.

So they bought these government bonds, which allowed them to then print more yen, and then what did they do?

They took that money, and they bought our government bonds, which were returning about 2 percent interest to them.

Now, that 2 percent interest. Think of this. That's coming out of your pocket. So we're paying them interest on 2 trillion dollars in Treasuries. This is about $40 billion a year. So we're sending $40 billion -- and that's fine. That's a deal. We're buying turtle tunnels. I mean, you know, we need those things. But Japan's entire defense budget is $47 billion. So we are, in effect, funding 40 -- 40 billion of their 47 billion in defense. But then, we also provide about $10 billion a year in discounts for guns and ammunition and everything else. So we are paying 100 percent of their military. This isn't by accident. And it's not a bad deal, actually. Our government is more than happy to do that. Because, Japan is the most important strategic defense partner, when it comes to detaining China, or defending Taiwan. We have 55,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan.

Japan is the only foreign country in the world, out of which the U.S. has permanently operated a U.S. carrier, battle group.

So back to the end being in free fall. To keep their bonds at zero percent and then make that arbitrage thing work. Japan has to continue to buy its own bonds.

But that's through quantitative easing, printing. So they print more Yen to buy their bonds. And any time the yield goes above zero, they're in trouble. They're creating artificial demand, for their bonds.

When they -- when the yield on the Japanese government bonds, went to 1 percent. 2 percent. Our ten-year bonds would not be able to service that debt. So our bonds, they no longer have the 40 billion dollars for their military, et cetera, et cetera. They have a debt of 253 percent. It would cost them -- it would cost them to pay interest on their debt, more than they would ever collect in taxes. So to pay the debt, they have to print currency, buy the bonds, buy ours. We buy theirs. And it just starts all over again. Because we have to print money. They have to print money. And so it goes into this inflation death spiral. And that's where they are right now. They are at the beginning of the inflation death spiral.

So here's the problem with all of this: If they collapse, I mean, really collapse. Who can bail them out?

We can't. We'll -- we're close to a death spiral. So who bails them out?

And what happens when next September, President Xi goes in front of his -- you know, people's Congress, and says, okay. Everybody vote. I am dictator for life!

When that happens, and Japan -- if Japan is out. We are so weak, with everything else that is going on, do you think we're going to save Taiwan? How would we even do that?

How would the West protect Australia?

By the way, all of this is happening, because the fed said, and the Treasury said, we can't bail you out.

But what you probably don't know, that we reported on, by about three months ago, the fed did bail the Bank of Japan out.

The fed gave them $7 trillion. That was in Q3 and Q4 of last year, we're in Q2.

$7 trillion, they burned through already. Prepare for impact. Prepare for impact. Because it is happening. The reason why they said, they would be number one on the -- on the boat for The Great Reset, is because if we say jump, they are forced to say, how high? But we no longer have enough juice to tell anyone to jump. Because we need all of that juice, ourselves.