The DPJ has pushed on Futenma — and the Obama administration, in the guise of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, has pushed back...

Nope, RF(P) stands for Request For Proposal, but there are monsters at this mash.

To those with the attention span of a candy-corn (me included), this aint just paperwork, so pay attention.

This brief post was inspired by a Bloomberg story on Asian currency strength — a good read, by the way...

It is undoubtedly all over the web, the news reported by Bloomberg that The (aptly named) Galleon's been hit sending her and her booty plummeting to the icy depths...

After a nice and entertaining week in Barcelona where I had the privilege not only to hold a seminar at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, but also to meet a host of interesting people, I thought that it would be about time that I finished my piece on the latest data from Japan which admittedly will be a bit backward looking, but hopefully interesting nonetheless...

Busy with the hard work of introducing a new policymaking process, rewriting the 2010 budget from scratch so to make room for the programs promised in the DPJ's election manifesto, and finding a way to extract concessions from the Obama administration on the realignment of US forces in Japan, it is understandable that the Hatoyama government has been relatively silent on the question of defense ministry reform...

Below is an extract of the latest data from the U.S. Treasury concerning foreign holders of U.S. Treasuries (year-to-date through the end of August)...

When a retired Israeli Air Force general calls me up in the middle of the night and tells me there’s a company I should look into, I sit up and take notice...

While many stocks have doubled or tripled over the past five or six months, venerable Ginza retailer, Matsuya, has been more than cut-in-half during the last three. The charts herein minimize the need for words about the pain inflicted upon large and concentrated (not to mention potentially leveraged) shareholders...

We've all heard it. Japan is the fastest aging society in the industrialized world. But how does this impact us now and in the future?