Japan and Finance

Well, this week the gyrations of the world's stockmarkets continue. In Australia, Kevin Rudd has decided just to print money as a way of coping with the crisis. In the States, the annual budget deficity may soon be a trillion dollars. That's a lot of zeroes.

In the last two weeks, stockmarkets have collapsed, the the Aussie and other currencies have fallen sharply, while the Japanese yen has skyrocketed to the Aussie.

And if the world's investors view Japan as a safe haven, then you know we are in serious trouble.

Japan; where the scale of boondoggling defies imagination; where banks have huge, unquantifiable bad debts; where the largest single amount of money ever collected by human beings- Japan's postal savings accounts- is spent on concreting beautiful rivers, building museums with no exhibits, and sending politicians to restaurants where the waitresses have no underwear and the floors are mirrored.

If Japan is a safe financial haven, a port in a storm, it is time to be afraid.