Kyle Bass has been saying the same thing for years: Japan’s going to implode. Now he says that he’s commissioned a poll that says Japan will most definitely, absolutely, assuredly, without a doubt implode (Hat tip to Business Insider’s Joe Weisenthal, who spotted this interview with The Financial Times). That’s in spite of the fact that investors who have shorted Japanese bonds for the last 10 years have been virtually destroyed by their shorts.
Kyle Bass: The Same Old Story On Japan
Most investors know that Bass has been shorting the yen for quite some time while also investing in certain Japanese stocks and warning against other Japanese stocks. He believes that the stimulus provided by Japan’s central bank under the country’s new prime minister will cause the nation’s economy to implode. He’s also predicting a bond crisis that will result in Japan losing control of interest rates and the yen.
In his new interview with The Financial Times, Bass maintains what he’s been saying about Japan for a long time, which basically is that he doesn’t think the Japanese government can keep up with its debt much longer and also that it can’t keep relying on domestic savers to keep the country up.
Kyle Bass’ Poll About Japan
Bass is so sure about his arguments on Japan that he commissioned a poll of more than a thousand Japanese investors. He asked them if they would buy more Japanese government bonds if their country had a bond crisis and their governor asked them to buy more bonds.
According to Bass, only 8 percent of Japanese investors said they would buy more Japanese government bonds. Also 83 percent of them said they would run away very quickly rather than walk.
He believes that this poll backs up what he’s been saying, and he’s put a two-year timer on Japan’s implosion. However, he admits that his timer could be a bit off because “it’s naïve for anyone to say they can predict with any kind of accuracy the end of a 70-year debt supercycle.”
“It’s the beginning of the end for Japanese bonds,” Bass said last month.
