BOJ Keeps Rates On Hold, Announces Tapering Of Taper

   Japan is what heading towards bankruptcy looks like with the drunkard, the BOJ promising that by next year, he will drink less. Sure! Fat chance!

  Long before the deadline, Japan will actually double the increase of bond issuance as soon as the coming recession starts knocking at the door this Summer. 

  By then the Yen will be weaker still, and the Japanese much poorer. But that should be safely after the election. All fine then? 

  Maybe not. There is a limit on endurance and even the Japanese, historically subdued, will rebel at some stage about this blistering impoverishment. But to what avail? By then, the countries' coffers will be empty and there won't be many escape routes left open. Trade will be restricted. Senile employees will be retiring in drove and the woke, ikikomori younger generation will be fed up with part-time arubaito (jobs) paying non sustainable wages. How could it be otherwise? The Japanese Government is pumping all the money to pay back the debt! (which fortunately goes mostly to retirees, but still.)

  Maybe at last some unaffordable natalist policies to promote children?  It should work wonders on villages where sometimes the average age is already above 80! 

BOJ Keeps Rates On Hold, Announces Tapering Of Taper

The first central bank to announce its decision this week (ahead of the Fed and BOE), overnight the BoJ kept rates on hold at 0.5% as widely expected in a unanimous vote after a two-day policy meeting, and provided limited new guidance on their assessment of macro conditions or on the timing of further rates hikes, punting due to uncertainty over tariffs. The key tension in their outlook continues to be between domestic conditions on inflation and wage growth evolving as expected, and a still highly uncertain backdrop from US and global policy on trade and other issues. Their tone on both of these issues was broadly unchanged from previous meetings.

More importantly, the central bank announced that it intends to slow the rate at which it reduces its bond purchases next year: the BoJ signalled it would shift to a slower tapering in JGB purchases from April 2026 (also as expected), maintaining the current JGB purchase reduction guidance, reducing purchases by ¥400 bn per quarter until March 2026, and then continue reducing purchases at a slower pace of ¥200 bn per quarter, to reach around ¥2 tn per month in January-March 2027.

This action is likely aimed at minimizing market disruptions while still providing adequate support for the Japanese economy amidst economic uncertainty arising from US trade policies. Furthermore, the BOJ indicated that it will perform an interim assessment of the plan to reduce bond purchasing in June 2026. 

The JGB purchase plan for the upcoming July-September period, released at the same time, showed that the BOJ will maintain the monthly purchase for the ultra-long sectors, and reduce purchases mainly in the medium- to long-term sectors.

The board’s decision follows a recent plunge in long-dated JGBs that rippled across global debt markets.

The BOJ began to reduce its bond purchases in August, five months after ditching its negative interest rate and yield curve control program. The need to subsequently fine tune the quantitative tightening plans is a fairly common occurrence for central banks including the Federal Reserve given the need to maintain market stability and avoid upending the economy. Still, the scale of the BOJ’s balance sheet against Japan’s output stands at around 120%, far bigger than the corresponding ratios for the Fed and the European Central Bank.

“We made our decision to ensure we’re not cutting purchases too fast in a way that would cause a negative impact on the economy through abnormal volatility in yields,” Ueda said at a press briefing after the decision.

As Goldman notes, the BOJ result was announced right after PM open and the result was inline with investors' expectation.  The yen fluctuated in a relatively narrow range against the dollar following the announcement while bonds fell, nudging yields higher on debt across maturities from two- to 40-years.

While the central bank’s decision showed it is aware of the need to carefully calibrate its paring of bond purchases, it also demonstrated a determination to reduce its footprint in the debt market. In that sense, the BOJ remains firmly on a path of normalization despite the high level of uncertainties in a world shaken by trade wars and intensifying conflict in the Middle East.

The new plan helps address recent volatility in the market while maintaining some flexibility, said Shinichiro Kobayashi, chief economist at Mitsubishi UFJ Research and Consulting, noting that the plan doesn’t even take effect until next year. “While balancing those two points with this decision, the BOJ remains on its tightening path.”

In an illustration of the central bank’s intention to keep moving out of the market and to stick to a largely predictable path, it will continue cutting monthly purchases at the current quarterly pace before the new plan kicks in next April.

Traders will watch to see if the central bank’s shift to smaller reductions in next year’s plan helps calm the market. The Ministry of Finance may also offer some reassurance to investors over the coming days, if it signals a reduction in its issuance of super-long bonds, as is expected by economists. Ueda said he was in close contact with the government over the BOJ’s bond purchases.

“The ball is now on the government’s side to calm the bond market,” said Mari Iwashita, executive rates strategist at Nomura Securities Co.

As Bloomberg noes, concerns about the future trajectory of Japan’s spending plans and its bond issuance persist ahead of a national election next month. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba is already on the back foot with a minority government that relies on some opposition support to pass legislation. Lowering Japan’s sales tax has become a rallying call for parties outside the ruling coalition ahead of the vote, a move that would further squeeze the nation’s finances.

With next year’s bond-buying plan now out in the open, BOJ watchers also scrutinized Ueda’s comments on the timing of the next rate hike given the ongoing strength of inflation. Japan’s key monthly inflation indicator showed prices rising at 3.5% in April while rice, the nation’s staple food, has nearly doubled of late, helping harden inflationary views among households.

BOJ officials see prices rising a little stronger than they previously expected, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg earlier this month even before oil prices surged on deepening Middle East tensions. That’s a factor that may open the door to discussions over whether to raise interest rates if the impact from global trade tensions appears manageable.

A meeting between Trump and Ishiba on Monday in Canada failed to deliver a trade deal that can reduce the uncertainties on trade. But no deal was probably preferable to a bad deal for Ishiba ahead of the election. Still, if the two sides can reach an agreement, that may open the path for the central bank to mull its next rate move.

“It’s not appropriate for me to comment on the likelihood of a rate hike in the near future, but I’d like to see how hard data pan out,” Ueda said.

“The BOJ will be watching Japan’s trade talks with Trump and Ishiba’s election as vital points but it’s hard to imagine both of them turn rosy in time for a move in July,” Iwashita said. “The moment of truth for a rate hike will probably come from around September when data will likely start to show the impact of tariffs”

Chronocide: How Technocracy Is Erasing The Past, Present, & Future

  Our world is about to be transformed, but which transformations will be the most important? The ones we see or the ones we don't? It will depend on what happens in the coming weeks. If things really get out of hands, we may soon long for the good old days! It certainly feels like time is speeding up.

Authored by Niall McCrae via Off-Guardian.org,

The past is another country, according to LP Hartley’s opening line of The Go-Between. Nowadays, we may say the same of the present, as the pace of technological and demographic change quickens.

As for the future, what confidence and certainties can we have for our children and grandchildren?

Countries might not exist in any recognisable form as a new world order is cemented. But it is not only borders that are being undrawn. When Francis Fukuyama declared the ‘end of history’ on the fall of communism, perhaps he was inadvertently priming for the globalists’ most dramatic impact on humanity: the erasure of time. As warned by David Fleming, whose philosophy of continuism offers a unifying rationale for preserving humanity against the technocratic onslaught, ‘chronocide’ is a strategy.

As social animals, human beings create society. Over generations, each community establishes and maintains its customs, beliefs, roles and relationships. While ideologically progressive humanists emphasise that we have more in common than our differences in race, religion or region, a person from one culture cannot simply move to a place of different culture and expect life to go on as normal.

The crucial component of society is time, measured in lifetimes of immersion. Indeed, human beings + time = culture.

In this equation, important factors may be understood as nature or nurture in the human-temporal complex, such as terrain, resources, climate, commerce, conflict and technology. Each society writes and curates its history.

In the classic dystopian novels of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, the past was deleted by design. Winston’s job is to revise records of events to comply with the current narrative, as it evolves. In Aldous Huxley’s futurism, babies are born by machine, and the idea of a woman giving birth is disturbing.

As the Marxists of the Frankfurt School realised in the 1920s, and as every management consultant knows, nothing really changes unless the culture changes. Social bonds and traditions are bulwarks against radical plans imposed from above. Piecemeal, incremental policies are prone to regression to norms, but major restructuring or other shocks to the system break social connections and shatter stability. The more dramatic and sudden the change, the more readily resistance is overcome.

Year Zero wipes the slate of our human story clean. For uncompromising totalitarians such as Pol Pot in Cambodia, this was a necessary means of shifting the people from a traditional agrarian existence to a communist order. Anyone harbouring relics or attitudes of the past was exterminated. While schoolchildren are taught (uncritically) about the Holocaust, generally they are uninformed on the trauma of extreme collectivisation.

Chronocide is the deliberate slashing and burning of everything in our culture – both the visible stem and branches above ground, and the underlying roots. We are being deprived of our continuity as families and fraternities, because such human connections are an obstacle to the technocratic mission. An atomised society is literally taking time out, in the following ways.

1. An Orwellian information war is being waged against the ordinary people. Facts derived from experience, common sense or critical thinking become ‘misinformation’ or ‘hate’. Knowledge handed down through generations is denigrated as unscientific old wives’ tales or prejudice from an intolerant past. The young, most heavily targeted by propaganda, are encouraged to reject time-honoured truths.

2. State-led behavioural psychology operations (‘psy-ops’) bewilder and frighten people, detaching them from settled knowledge and understanding. Placing the populace in uncharted territory, as in the Covid-19 pseudo-pandemic, puts them at the mercy of the powers-that-be. A worldwide deadly contagion could not be remembered by any living person, as the Spanish influenza outbreak was over a hundred years ago. In emergencies the authorities take control, and life is never the same again afterwards.

3. Safetyism suffocates culture, by replacing festivities steeped in heritage with managed events. Bonfire nights are cancelled if there’s any wind blowing, village fetes are stopped if there’s a risk of someone having an allergic reaction to homemade jam, and vigorous children’s games such as ‘British Bulldog’ are banished from the school playground. The insurance industry, through high cost of cover, helps to curtail activities that displease the authorities.

4. Dehumanising architecture proliferates on the skyline. On a scale much greater than in the social engineering of the 1960s, when swaths of terraced housing were replaced by concrete blocks and communities were moved en masse to new towns, construction is ever-upward. The physical landscape may retain remnants of the past, but churches, banks and pubs have closed, and the high street is in creeping desolation. Lessons from the recent past about the problems of high-rise living have been discarded. Smart Cities are being developed, with forests of steel-and-glass apartment blocks.

5. Expropriation of people’s property and assets is transferring all wealth to the elite. The World Economic Forum tells us that ‘you will own nothing and be happy’, but someone must own the capital. Generational inheritance will end, as shown by the extortionate tax on farms that have stayed in family ownership for centuries, forcing landowners to sell.

6. Mass migration has led to many people of the host country feeling marginalised and alienated. Despite the platitudes about multiculturalism, social cohesion has declined as the identity and loyalty of recent incomers is tied to their kith and kin, with little sense of shared belonging. That’s what our rulers want. Rootless cosmopolitans (the ‘Anywheres’ described by David Goodhart) always prefer things foreign or exotic to the predictable and homely, but now shire folk and the indigenous working class (‘Somewheres’) are finding themselves in a timeless Nowhere.

7. Rapid technological development is displacing people from physical to virtual reality. While the present is most visibly changing in demographic transformation, the near future poses an existential threat to humanity, making inter cultural tensions seem like a picnic in the park. The future, if the technocrats get their way, is transhumanism.

The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (1948) defines genocide as the killing of a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. But there is also the concept of cultural genocide, as devised by Raphael Lemkin, entailing ‘systematic and organized destruction of the cultural heritage’.

A culture can be wiped out without a shot being fired. The technocrats have been playing a long game, preparing for a post-cultural, post-temporal future. Chronocide is a crime against humanity.

"Everyone Should Immediately Evacuate Tehran!", Trump Warns

   It is almost painful to be proven right so fast! Netanyahu started a war he knew Israel couldn't finish. But at the same time, he also knew he had the leverage to change Trump's mind, and that alone is why he took the risk. 

  And here we are not even one week into the conflict (I expected it would take two!) and the man is already acting unhinged. The fact that it comes naturally for Trump is no excuse. This foible is being used by Netanyahu but it will also be used later by others. Worse, it proves to the world that negotiations with the Trump administration are pointless. As I mentioned earlier, Trump has no strategy. Give him a point or two he can boast about in the medias and it's game, set and match.

 Rome didn't fall because one crazy Emperor went unhinged and had his horse elected to the Senate. (And yes, the story is probably either apocryphe or he was making a point.)  But we live in a far more complex world. The Biden Administration was a shamble of woke and DEI policies but at least it was predictable. Trump is not. Maybe it is time for the rest of the world to become "preper" just in case the Empire goes rogue. If I was BRICS, I would speed up whatever I am working on. You never know. Do you really want to depend on the dollar in such an unstable environment?

"Everyone Should Immediately Evacuate Tehran!", Trump Warns

Update (1840ET): President Trump just posted an ominous warning on his social media platform TruthSocial

Iran should have signed the “deal” I told them to sign.

What a shame, and waste of human life.

Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON.

I said it over and over again!

Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!

A rather worrying shift from optimism today that peace (or not war_ was closer...

Stock futures (and crypto) are down on the post and gold and oil are stronger.

*  *  *

Update(1422ET): Iran is warning of a 'more painful response' if the US fails to rein in Israel, IRNA News is reporting, as more major explosions have been observed in Tehran and across part of Iran. The last 48 hours saw things escalate into sustained daytime strikes, including on Iranian state TV and radio headquarters buildings.

Importantly the Iranian government is now expressly denying the accuracy of an earlier Wall Street Journal report saying that Tehran is seeking to get to the negotiating table again with the Trump administration. Iran is also claiming its forces shot down an Israeli F-35 stealth fighter near Tabriz, Iran’s state-run Nour news claims, but this has been met by a swift rejection by the IDF, which called it "fake news". 

According to breaking Israeli media reports, PM Netanyahu now says Israel won’t rule out killing Khamenei: ‘It would end the conflict’ - TOI says. Netanyahu is giving his first official full press conference since the start of the air war four days ago. "I will not detail our plans publicly, but we will do whatever it takes," he said. Importantly, a big claim was made...

Netanyahu says Israel 'well coordinated' with US during Iran campaign

The entire morning drop in oil prices has been erased on these latest escalatory headlines:

And more per Israeli media:

An Israeli Air Force drone struck and destroyed two Iranian F-14 fighter jets at an airport in Tehran, IDF Spokesman Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin reveals in a press conference.

The US-made F-14 Tomcats were supplied to Iran before the 1979 Islamic Revolution and are believed to be the last ones still in operation.

The IDF publishes footage of the strike.

A veteran Mideast war correspondent who has contacts in the Iranian government has this to say:

Iranian state assets on fire during the day Monday...

Another US carrier is en route to the region and there's no off-ramp as of yet.

* * *

Update(1026ET): Below is Fox News' chief national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin confirming a major breaking development:

CONFIRMED: The USS Nimitz aircraft carrier strike group is on its way to the Middle East from the South China Sea, a U.S. official tells Fox News. The Nimitz was previously scheduled to replace the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group which has been deployed for several months, but is now heading to the Middle East ahead of schedule. The two will now be in the Middle East at the same time. The USS Nimitz is the oldest active aircraft carrier in the U.S. Navy, commissioned on May 3, 1975. Scheduled to be decommissioned in 2026, this is possibly its final sea voyage. This is a very significant symbolic deployment because it was deployed in 1980 and its helicopters that were part of the failed US effort known as Operation Eagle Claw to rescue the American hostages being held at the US Embassy in Tehran. The US has been in a shadow war against Iran ever since. 

Soon after this reporting:

IRAN IS PREPARING FOR THE 'LARGEST AND MOST INTENSE MISSILE ATTACK IN HISTORY ON ISRAELI SOIL' -IRANIAN STATE MEDIA

This comes on the heels of reports that the US Embassy in Tel Aviv suffered "minor damage" from a nearby Iranian ballistic missile impact. And Reuters confirms:

US military has moved a large number of refueling tanker craft to Europe to give options to US President Trump...

This likely won't end well, given the Times of Israel is now citing Israeli officials who say the operation is expected to last two to three weeks. "There's a bank of military targets that we can complete prettying quickly." Meanwhile Iranian reports are claiming that only some 5% of its offensive missile capacity has been used. Meanwhile:

IRAN'S REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS CALL ON TEL AVIV RESIDENTS TO EVACUATE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE -IRANIAN STATE MEDIA

* * *

Update(1008ET): Everything is suddenly exploding higher - also with gold and oil dropping - especially on the following WSJ breaking report which suggests (dubiously, we should add...) that the Iranians are 'open' to returning to the negotiating table with Trump officials, even as ballistic missiles rain down on Israel, and as much of the Islamic Republic - particularly oil depots - burn...

"In the midst of a ferocious Israeli air campaign, Tehran has told Arab officials they would be open to return to the negotiating table as long as the U.S. doesn’t join the attack, the officials said. They also passed messages to Israel saying it is in the interest of both sides to keep the violence contained," per WSJ on Monday.

Oil prices tumbling on the breaking report...

S&P 2% from ATH...

Gold has been falling since before the missile war started late on Thursday...

WSJ continues, "Iran has been urgently signaling that it seeks an end to hostilities and resumption of talks over its nuclear programs, sending messages to Israel and the U.S. via Arab intermediaries, Middle Eastern and European officials said."

This comes also amid reports that dozens of US Air Force tankers have in the last hours taken off from the United States and headed towards Europe, as also confirmed in Flightradar24 and Air Live. Is Trump ready to join the Israeli side militarily? The Iranians fear so, it appears.

Iran's message is that "it is in the interest of both sides to keep the violence contained" - according to an urgeng diplomatic message passed along. But at this point it seems clear that Israel is going for full regime decapitation, given also that reports say the Israel Air Force has total aerial dominance over Western Iran and skies above Tehran at this point. If these reports of an Iranian olive branch are accurate, is it too-little-too-late?

* * *

After another day on the receiving end of an Israeli war of aggression that began Friday, Iran delivered a major counterpunch overnight, further demonstrating that Israel's highly-touted Iron Dome defense system is vulnerable to Iran's hypersonic missiles. Upon completing a deadly barrage aimed at targets in Tel Aviv, Haifa and elsewhere, Iran claimed it had employed a "new method" that put Israel's multi-layered defense system in disarray to the point its various systems targeted each other.  

As fire and rescue teams scrambled to respond to the damage, Times of Israel reported at least eight people had been killed and more than 90 injured in the early-Monday attack, bringing Israel's running death toll to at least 24 with hundreds wounded. “The arrogant dictator of Tehran has become a scared murderer who fires at Israel’s civilian home front in order to deter the IDF from continuing to carry out attacks that are destroying his capabilities,” said Defense Minister Israel Katz, only to then promise that "residents of Tehran will pay the price, and soon."  

Iran claimed it struck targets that included a power plant in Haifa that "was seen engulfed in flames," an oil refinery complex in Bazan, a facility of the military technology company Rafael Advanced Defense Systems facility, as well as Ben Gurion Airport. The Cradle reports that other targets included Nevatim Air Base, an army camp in Galilee, and hits on power grid facilities that caused "widespread blackouts." Projectiles also hit a residential high-rise building and at least another residential area. An Iranian defense official said the attack included missiles with 1.5-ton warheads, but noted Iran has even heavier warheads in its inventory.  

Citing a statement from the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, state media outlet PressTV reported that "the operation specifically targeted the Zionist regime’s command and control systems using advanced tactics and enhanced intelligence-tech capabilities."

“As a result,” the IRGC said, “the enemy’s multilayered defense systems were thrown into disarray, to the point where their own air defense units began firing on each other.” One video making the rounds on social media appears to show an IDF missile interceptor blowing itself up, though the careful observer must contemplate the possibility that an unforced IDF error captured on video may have been opportunistically exploited to make an exaggerated claim: 

Dampening Israeli hopes that Iran may run out of missiles soon, Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi told Army Radio that Iran has "thousands of ballistic missiles" in its inventory, which the Times of Israel called "a higher figure than previously estimated." 

Iran has similarly made repeated claims that it hasn't used its full resources yet. “We are still exercising restraint and have not deployed all our capabilities to avoid global chaos," IRGC chief Major General Mohsen Rezaei told Iranian state media. "However, we may reach a point where we use new weapons."  While reiterating Iran's claim that it doesn't seek to acquire a nuclear weapon -- a claim re-certified as valid by the US intelligence community as recently as March of this year -- he hinted that Iran's stance on nuclear weapon development could change, saying "the future cannot be predicted with precision."

A question is starting to loom large: How long can this Israeli society -- which has for years gone almost entirely unscathed as its military unleashes utter devastation on lesser forces and civilian populations -- withstand prolonged destruction from a well-equipped foe like Iran? 

The real and true crisis (Joke)

   There's the US capitol in the back, but japan would be more appropriate for this cartoon, and so would Europe. We are approaching the end game of debt. The crisis in Ukraine and Iran are not taking place in a vacuum but in a sea of debt.