lessons from 2013 #3

3. The yen will not save you. This holds true unless you are Mitsubishi motors or Mazda. The yen has weakened, but halfway through the 2013 fiscal year, very few companies are blowing the lights out with surprising profits. Instead the diversification of production over the last 5 years has insulated many companies from the vagaries of foreign exchange. 

What we have here is a failure to inflate. So you get what we had here last week. Which is the way he wants it. Well he gets it. 

The yen cannot save japan. It is now undervalued and thus will have a tendency to strengthen barring outside interference. 

We have entered the knowledge economy, whether japan wants to recognize it or not. 

The smartest country wins. The more you send kids to graduate school the better chance of survival. The US knows this already. Japan thinks it can provide a quick fix with the yen. It can't.

If japan wants to compete with china at its game, good luck. But this is low stakes poker compared with what is out there for the intelligentsia to take. 

Boys, be ambitious. This still holds true.