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Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Moody’s Opens Pandora’s Box on AAA Debt Ratings: William Pesek

More downgrades on government debts. This time it is Japan. UK has been put on the watch list and there are loud warning about US debt levels.

So where do you invest your money?

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May 26 (Bloomberg) -- The shot Standard & Poor’s put across Britain’s bow last week made headlines. An earlier one by Moody’s Investors Service deserves more attention.

The Moody’s action didn’t involve the U.K., but Japan. On May 18, it stripped Asia’s biggest economy of its last AAA rating. Moody’s cut Japan’s foreign-currency debt grade from Aaa to Aa2. While Japan is a negligible overseas borrower, the symbolism extends to a much bigger point.

Sunday, March 8, 2009

U.S. Bubble Collapse to Be Worse Than Japan’s,

By Patrick Rial

Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. is facing a deflationary collapse more severe than the crash that hobbled Japan’s economy in the 1990s, leaving gold as the only defensive play for investors, according to CLSA Ltd.’s Christopher Wood.

The housing recession in the U.S. led to a crisis in the banking system as lenders became saddled with illiquid mortgage assets, souring the securitization industry that helped drive credit growth in recent years. The nation’s retail sales fell 10.5 percent in December as consumers became more pessimistic and scaled back purchases.

“The collapse of securitization is a much more deflationary situation in the U.S. than anything seen in Japan when the bubble collapsed in the early 1990s,” Wood, Institutional Investor’s top-ranked Asia strategist, said at a conference in Tokyo sponsored by CLSA. “What we need in the future is a more fundamentally disciplined system, even at the cost of higher levels of growth.”

Gold may be the safest haven for investors as policy makers accelerate responses to the crisis, devaluing currencies versus hard assets such as gold in the process, said Wood. Gold is likely to more than quadruple from the current level of $986 per ounce currently to $3,500 in 2010, he said.

Wood, who in 2003 predicted the U.S. housing crisis, joined New York University economist Nouriel Roubini in cautioning against investment in Europe due to the rising risk among economies in the eastern and central parts of the continent that carry current account deficits.

Moody’s Investors Service Inc. on Feb. 17 said some of Europe’s largest banks may be downgraded because of loans to eastern Europe, sending shares of lenders tumbling.

“In my view, we will have a full-scale currency collapse in central and eastern Europe,” the strategist said. “This will lead to a growing focus on the huge exposure of the European banks to these distressed economies.”

China and India remain the best bets for equity investors over the long term, Wood said.