By Tatiana Serafin, Contributor Japan’s new government, led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, has ushered in an era of monetary easing in Japan since December, weakening the yen and making exports cheaper and Japanese stocks more attractive. From his party’s election in December to March, the yen is down 10.9% against the dollar. But sales are up and stock prices are skyrocketing at many of Japan’s leading companies. In fact the Nikkei is up in both yen and dollar terms (22.9% and 8.5% respectively), returning to levels not seen since 2008. That means impressive increases in the fortunes of Japan’s 50 wealthiest. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Tag Archives: Contributor Japan
Riding The Japanese Bull Without The Yen Drag
Japan has been perhaps the most popular equity market topic in the past six months, ever since current Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came back with a vengeance, bringing with him promises of unprecedented monetary and fiscal stimulus to get the Japanese market back on its feet. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
Japan's New Rare Earth Discovery: That's China's Monopoly Entirely Blown
By Tim Worstall, Contributor Japan has just announced another vast discovery of rare earth bearing materials on the ocean floor. This does rather put an end to any possibility of China having a long term lock on the supply of these vital elements. Japan is celebrating the find of an “astronomically” high level of rare earth deposits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, a discovery which will further undermine China’s failing attempts to control the global supply of the substances. You might recall a couple of years back there was a similar Japanese claim. There it was that the plumes from underwater volcanoes were rich in rare earths. This makes good sense as rare earths are constituents of pegmatites, pegmatites come from volcanoes. Thus, given that these are underwater volcanoes, instead of the REs becoming part of the rock they’re floating off through the water as dust. Further, the floating through the water part does some of the separation of the REs from the other components (as surface water does some of the sorting of alluvial deposits as they weather out of the same types of rocks) so there were areas of sediment that were RE rich. …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest
How Japan Discovered Conservation: Fukushima
By Jeff McMahon, Contributor Japan lost a quarter of its electric power capacity when it shuttered its nuclear reactors in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, but predicted blackouts have not materialized thanks to a conservation effort that has reduced energy demand by as much as 11 percent. Although conservation is the greenest of technologies, the Japanese people have “suffered” with thermostat settings of 83 in summer, according to a Tokyo Gas Company executive who is studying energy efficiency at Stanford University. And, he added, conservation cannot be expected to endure.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Forbes Latest