Japan

The Japanese economy, the world's third-largest behind the U.S. and China, showed a smaller-than-expected fourth-quarter GDP contraction. Capital spending actually rose 4.9% and Japan's economy looks to be getting a lift from a weaker yen and reconstruction efforts following last year's tragic...

There was more bad news out of Europe on Thursday when the European Union's statistics agency Eurostat announced that unemployment in the euro zone had climbed to a euro era record high and inflation was on the rise too. Eurostat said that unemployment across the euro zone had reached 10.7 percent...

The Japanese yen reversed course and strengthened against the American dollar, the euro and other major currencies during trading on Monday. One of the reasons for the strengthening yen was that the Group of 20 nations resisted the requests from European Union leaders to increase the contribution...

In our last article, we asked if the yen is done strengthening and if it will continue to weaken. Since then, the market has answered the question quite clearly. The yen has successfully bounced from the 75.9 level and has now surged past the 79.5 level without any hint of pullback. When a...

Standard and Poor's affirmed its AA- rating for Japan, while maintaining a negative outlook for the country. The credit rating agency also warned that Japan could be downgraded if its public debt continued climbing higher or if the Japanese economy grows more slowly than expected. One of the...

Japanese authorities reported a trade deficit for last month that was the biggest January trade deficit on record. A strong yen, after effects from last year's natural disasters and weakening demand in China and Europe were the major contributing factors to Japan's growing trade deficit. The...

More evidence emerged today that the American economy is picking up steam. The latest figures from the Conference Board revealed that the index of leading economic indicators (LEI ) rose 0.4 percent during the month of January, which was the fourth month in a row that the closely observed economic...

Whenever Greece takes a step forward in addressing its financial crisis, the country then seems to take two steps back. Greece's chances of avoiding a painful default seem to have taken yet another step back, as Eurozone finance ministers have questioned the country's willingness to commit to...

The Japanese stock market closed at a 6 month high on Wednesday, a day after the Bank of Japan made the unexpected announcement that it was increasing its asset purchase and lending program and had set its official inflation goal at 1 percent. The Nikkei 225 index of Japanese stocks climbed 208.27...

In this world of money printing, no country can match the United States when a helicopter pilot heads its central bank. However, now that everyone sees that the America-based Zero Percent Interest Rate Policy (ZIRP) is becoming a permanent policy, central banks around the world - other than the...