The biblical parable of the talents contains a timely warning for the gold market. In the story the master distributes his wealth between three servants. The first and the second put their capital to work in businesses and generate healthy profits. The third, scared of losses, buries his share in the ground.
Sovereign downgrade? Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Such is likely to be the response of any investor in Japan to the news that Standard and Poors has removed its triple A rating on US
The world has come to think of Japan as the economic equivalent of Duran Duran – an over-hyped 1980s phenomenon that has fallen into justly deserved obscurity.
How much more “emerging” have the emerging markets left to do? Probably not much, given the vast amount of capital and hope invested in the asset class already.
Disaster reveals national character in the starkest possible way. Japan’s response to the unprecedented triple blow of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown has demonstrated both its strengths and weaknesses – to the world and perhaps to the Japanese themselves.
“When my mother was 10, she was evacuated to Sendai and saw the whole town get bombed flat. My father experienced the big air-raids on Yokohama. Their generation started out when there was nothing left of Japan but smoking ruins. Don’t worry about us – we’ll definitely recover this time too.”
The earthquake which struck Japan on Friday with such devastating human cost was powerful enough to shift the earth’s on its axis and move the Japanese land mass six feet. It is human nature to assume that an event of such destructive force must have powerful lasting effects on stock markets too, but that is not necessarily the case.
Long-term residents of Tokyo tend to be blasé about earthquakes, but this one felt different right from the start. It announced itself with a thunderous jolt
“What most likely happened was pedal misapplication.” So concluded an official of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the US body which has just published its report on the spate of accidents involving Toyota cars.
S&P’s downgrade of Japan’s credit-rating raises a disturbing prospect. Is this stage two of the global credit crisis, featuring chain of sovereign defaults amongst the largest economies?