via CNN
Tokyo (CNN) -- Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has called for snap parliamentary elections for next month, following news that the country had slipped into a recession.That's the first paragraph of the article. What follows should send chills up the spine of defense corporations selling the F-35, the program office and MV-22 fanboys....
Abe also announced an 18-month delay in a controversial sales tax hike during a press conference Tuesday.
The prime minister said he will dissolve the parliament's lower house on Friday.Basically the Japanese Prime Minister just did to the Japanese govt, what the US public did to the Obama administration.
The Japanese economy slipped into recession in the third quarter.
They got rolled.
Slobber-knocked.
Repudiated.
But why this matters is because with the Japanese economy slipping back into recession, the defense buildup that Abe was pushing is now dead in the water.
This is why you follow economic issues if you're interested in defense. But the Japanese shouldn't feel bad. The same is coming to our shores. Defense analyst, Congressional analyst and Senators/Representatives themselves have all said the same.
Sequestration will continue.
The ramp up of F-35 production WILL NOT HAPPEN.
The death spiral is here.
SIDENOTE: Have you been paying attention to the long shore-man's slowdown in Los Angeles? This will not be a booming Christmas as some predicted. Retailers have already missed delivery windows from China. Because of that China will continue to slow. Germany is already in recession and the bad news will arrive at our shores soon enough. 2015 will not be a good year. My prediction? 2014 was just a break from bad economic news.
We're in a long stagnation period brought on by many factors such as the baby boom, an extended cycle of cheap money, financial deregulation, globalization, and of course the financial crisis of 2009 and related sovereign debt crisis.
ReplyDeleteMy thought is that we are going to see a recurring cycle of a little bit up and little bit down, with lots of window dressing (things like QE) but never really going anywhere. Part of the reason is that the problems are deep and they are structural. No amount of selling consumer goods at Walmart or Best Buy is going to fix this problem quickly. The reality is this could go on for decades and computerization along with automation is not going to make it any better. There will be whole groups left behind.
so this means the japanese military spending will get massive cuts ? looks like the great japanese naval forces will face the axe .. great news for the chinese
ReplyDeletebuntalanlucu
DeleteNo, because the military comes ahead of all else in militaristic nations like Abe's Japan or Kim Jong Un's North Korea. Abe will cut welfare before he touches defense spending.
After all, pre-1941 Japan was a relatively poor nation, yet that didn't stop Japan's Imperial leaders from building up a massive military.
Nar, Abe isn't quitting, he's just picked fight he thinks he can win.
ReplyDeleteHe was elected on a specific platform, he wants to stray from that, so he's called an election to get permission to try his new plan.
He hasn't been forced to call elections, he's brought them forward.
That's not to say the F35 is alive and kicking, but Abe isn't expecting to lose the lower house, he expects to conquer it
Sol, head over to google finance and take a look at the charts of WMT, TGT, M, BBY, and the retail index XRT. All of them have absolutely exploded in the last two weeks. Retailers are all beating and raising numbers and investors are buying them since they have no international exposure. The data overnight out of Europe, China, and Japan was all awful. People hide long retailers when that happens. The stocks that get hit on global growth worries are industrials and tech. The situation in California is def a problem for the retailers, but more and more of that traffic is getting routed through Vancouver and then down South from there because of the stupidity from the unions at the ports on the West coast of America.
ReplyDeleteThere are other west coast ports that are unaffected by the labor slowdown, so it's just a matter of realigning surface transportation networks. This is one of the few good aspects of NAFTA.
ReplyDeleteWhat will happen is that Abe will buy 142 F-35s as planned, but the F-3 program is likely to get a hit. The 25DMU concept was released earlier this month and this one was changed yet again, meaning nothing is firm or fixed in the F-3 program. Compare this to the KFX program, which has a stable candidate model for full-scale development and the funding lined up. The KFX will be the only new "western" fighter to stand up to China's J-20 and J-31 in the 2020s time period, so a lot rides on this program.
ReplyDeleteThe 25DMU, 2014's F-3 concept.
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