Japan’s long-dated bonds are wobbling like a Jenga tower, and with the LDP unable to scrape together a clear majority, investors are basically sitting on their hands until someone new grabs the wheel—meaning the yen, bonds, and equities are in for a bumpy ride.

You don’t need a PhD in Japanese financial sudoku to see it: political chaos is putting fresh pressure on the yen and long bonds, while Japan races France and the UK in the grim contest of who defaults first.

After the collapse of Japan’s lame-duck Ishiba, the next featherless fowl lining up for the chopping block is France’s very own “Bay-Roue De Secours,” a lame duck from Day One. And what’s next on the French menu? Another lame duck prime minister, a farcical election, or “Macro-Leon” finally dropping the democratic pretense altogether by invoking Article 16 to crown himself quasi-emperor—steering France straight into a bitter IMF bailout and a nice, sizzling hot war with Russia.

France’s finances are circling the drain—deficit at 5.8% of GDP, Brussels scolding like a schoolmaster, and Paris responding with the usual patchwork of cuts and taxes (defense, of course, spared). The parties will bicker over pensions and taxing the rich, but without real austerity, debt rockets toward 125% of GDP by 2030. In short: déjà vu, fiscal chaos dressed up as governance.

In any case, the political circus is back—same clowns, new costumes.

As expected, France’s lame duck “Bay-Roue De Secours” finally got tossed out by parliament, clearing the stage for yet another round of political theatre—while the country’s eternal communist trade unions, professional strikers since time immemorial, gear up once again to defend their privileges and shove France deeper into the debt abyss.

Whoever gets the honor of being France’s next lame-duck Prime Minister will inherit a fiscal dumpster fire: the euro area’s fattest deficit, debt piling up at €5,000 a second, and a debt-servicing bill projected to hit €75 billion next year. Bon courage.

France isn’t just flirting with a downgrade from its tame, politically housebroken rating agencies—it’s also inching toward the ultimate humiliation: an IMF bailout. And don’t think Paris will be the only one lining up with a tin cup; the UK and even Germany are staggering down the same debt-ridden path under the steady guidance of Malthusian, authoritarian Keynesians.

While some are just now catching on that government statistics are mostly smoke and mirrors, the Treasury dropped $58 billion in 3-year paper. The auction stopped at a high yield of 3.485% — a sharp drop from 3.669% last month and the lowest since September 2024, back when the Fed “heroically” slashed 50bps after yet another embarrassing jobs revision. This one even stopped through the When-Issued 3.492% by 0.7bps, the biggest through since February 2025, after three straight tailing auctions. Nothing says “confidence” like investors piling in while the data is busy rewriting itself.

The bid-to-cover came in at a flashy 2.726%, up 20bps from August and the strongest since February. But the real showstopper was in the internals: Indirects scooped up a near-record 74.24%, a massive jump from August’s 53.99% and the second-highest on record. Apparently, nothing says “faith in America” quite like foreigners rushing to buy its IOUs.

And with Directs walking away with 17.39%, Dealers were left holding a measly 8.37% — the lowest on record. Imagine that: the so-called “primary dealers,” supposedly the backbone of the Treasury market, reduced to fighting over scraps at their own dinner table.

Overall, this was a blowout auction — easily top three on record — which only proves that consensus still hasn’t grasped the irony: the “once upon a time” risk-free asset isn’t so risk-free anymore when trust in public institutions is circling the drain.

After ‘Bay-Roue De Secours’ inevitably detonated in a confidence vote no one actually had confidence in, ‘Macro-Leon’ dusted off his Rolodex of yes-men and pulled out Sebastien ‘Le Corniaud’. Beyond being a loyal valet to ‘Le Petit Napoléon’, the freshly minted lame duck is also a card-carrying warmonger, best known for cheerleading the illegitimate Dancer on High Heels while shoving the Malthusian agenda straight into the Ukrainian meat grinder.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/03/11/7502317/

At 39, ‘Le Corniaud’ is the only minister to have served continuously since Macro-Leon took office in 2017. He steps into the premiership after a coalition of far-right and left-wing lawmakers successfully ousted his predecessor.
Despite the political circus, the economy has shown surprising resilience: manufacturing has emerged from a prolonged slump, and growth exceeded expectations in Q2. Still, a Bank of France survey conducted around the latest confidence vote revealed a sharp spike in business uncertainty — eerily reminiscent of the panic that followed Macro-Leon’s dissolution of parliament.

In a nutshell, newly minted lame-duck PM ‘Le Corniaud’ inherits a political circus while the economy stubbornly refuses to panic—though business leaders clearly wish it would.

Neither Donald Copperfield nor his band of Western illusionists—including the ever-corrupt PM of Judea—has ever bothered to look for peace.
Apparently, “stability” is just a trick they’ve yet to master. With the Middle East and Ukraine stuck in perpetual chaos, the Malthusian West is hurtling toward its grand finale—applause optional.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08K9GUw77Uw

While the Middle East preps for yet another season of “Who Wants to Torch the Region?”, China’s statisticians proudly announced that producer prices only fell 2.9% in August—apparently, that counts as progress when you’ve been tripping down the stairs for eight straight months. Officials credit this “victory” to curbing “disorderly competition,” which in Beijing-speak means telling coal, steel, and solar producers to stop fighting over who can go bankrupt the fastest. Meanwhile, food prices tanked 4.3%—bad news for farmers, great news if your diet consists of instant noodles. The core CPI managed to crawl up to 0.9%, which is being hailed as a triumph of “innovation industries,” though one suspects it’s really just higher prices for AI-powered gadgets no one actually needs.

Forget the noise—equity investors should keep their eyes on the spread between core CPI and PPI. Competition may be “bad” for business, but those who can actually deliver better products at lower costs are now the market’s darlings. In August, China chalked up its 36th consecutive month of a positive CPI–PPI spread, the very engine behind the equity market’s re-rating. Meanwhile, the ever-wise Western crowd keeps mocking China and blaming the “China bogeyman” for every pothole in their own backyard—because nothing says sound economics like projection and denial.

In a nutshell, China just notched its 36th straight month of a positive CPI–PPI spread, stoking the “Make China Great Again” moment, while the West keeps tripping over its own shoelaces and blaming the China bogeyman.

In true “no matter who’s in the Oval Office” fashion, the Bull Shit” Office (better known as BLS) has outdone itself: the preliminary March 2025 benchmark revision slashed 911,000 payrolls—the largest negative revision ever—following last year’s déjà-vu 818K cut. Apparently, businesses were “forgetful” in their reports, and nonrespondents weren’t much help either. As usual, these errors—dressed up as response and nonresponse quirks—remind us that the BLS’ numbers are more art than science, and history shows the official figures are always subject to revision, often downward, with the “final” version only coming next February.