Japan's Yen Collapse Threatens to Drag the US Down With It | Alex Krainer

In March 2022, while the yen was trading around 115 to the US dollar, I wrote that the "yen will burn to a crisp over the coming years." Four+ years (and numerous interventions) later, it takes 159.2 yen to buy one dollar, the weakest it’s been in 40 years, which is amplifying Japan’s rampant inflationary pressures. If the oil prices continue to rise, which seems likely, and if the yen continues to fall, which also seems likely, Japan could find itself in a disastrous double jeopardy.
 

 

» The predictable disintegration of Japan's fiscal and economic position is now all but inevitable. Japanese Government Bonds will collapse. The unraveling could resemble what Germany had experienced 100 years ago. «

Namely, Japan has to import about 3 million barrels of crude oil per day which, at current prices, is well in excess of $250 million/day, settled in US dollars. The higher the oil price goes, the greater Japan's demand for US dollars, and the greater the downward pressure on the yen. The lower the yen, and the higher the prices of oil and other imported goods, the more inflation Japan imports via its US dollar oil purchases.

US Sovereign Liquidity Strain: Facing weak demand that pushed 30-year yields to a 16-year high of 5.33%, the US Treasury doubled its liquidity buybacks of 10-, 20-, and 30-year bonds from $2 billion to over $4 billion per operation. By issuing short-term debt to repurchase long-term debt, the Treasury temporarily suppressed yields by 9–10 basis points.

Aggressive Japanese Capital Flight: Japan, the largest foreign holder of US debt, liquidated $26.4 billion in Treasuries in June alone (bringing holdings to $1.117 trillion) to raise funds to defend the falling yen.

Failing Currency Interventions: Despite joint US-Japan interventions pulling the yen back from 40-year lows near 164, the currency quickly erased over half those gains to trade above 159, pressuring the Bank of Japan to prepare further sales.

Systemic Risk: The alignment of Japan selling US debt to protect its currency alongside the US acting as the buyer of last resort for its own bonds indicates deep structural friction in global debt markets, deferring broader volatility across equities, real estate, and fixed income. 

Raising rates is not an option

Ordinarily, when they wish to strengthen their currency, central bankers raise interest rates. That would make Japanese financial assets more attractive to global investors, which would boost the demand for and purchases of yen. But the Bank of Japan (BOJ) can hardly afford to do that, given that it would bankrupt the Japanese government, which is leading the developed world in terms of debt-to-GDP, which currently stands at around 240%.

» As inflation accelerates, the Nikkei could continue to soar. However, the nominal gains in stocks will be more than offset by their losses in yen, still leaving investors with close to total losses in real terms. «

 Nikkei (weekly candles), July 2022 to August 2026.

Raising interest rates would also crash Japan’s financial markets and with it, Japan’s pension funds. When the BOJ raised the interest rates by only 0.25% on 31 July 2024, the Nikkei collapsed by -12.4%—its worst one-day crash since the Kobe earthquake in 1987. Currently, Japan’s debt to GDP stands at around 240%.

Sustainable market manipulation?

The answer, probably, is yes, but not this week. Given that raising interest rates is unpalatable, Japan had the option of selling its $1.1+ hoard of US Treasuries and using the proceeds to buy and prop up the yen. In fact, Japan’s Finance Minister Satsuki Katayama was anxious enough about her government's fiscal position that on July 10 she explicitly encouraged Japanese households and pension funds "to increase their investments in Japanese financial assets."

But selling US investments to buy Japanese assets would put further pressure on US interest rates, putting a squeeze on the US Government which is already in a massive fiscal bind. In fact, the US Government can be so sensitive about foreign governments selling their Treasury debt that they can regard it as an act of war. Accordingly, Ms. Katayama quickly backpedaled from her cunning plan. Instead, the US and Japan together coordinated an intervention to support the yen and relieve Japan’s inflationary pressure.
 

» The reason why even real assets turn worthless is that inflation 
indiscriminately annihilates the purchasing power in an economy. « 
The Economics of Inflation. Basis for all curves: January 1922 = 100. 

In late July, the US coordinated market operations with Japan to support the yen, which have been somewhat successful: they knocked the yen back up from its 40-year low of 164 yen to the dollar to below 156. Since then, however, the yen fell back to just under 160 yen/USD, where it is trading today.

Even when governments do it, currency rate manipulations ultimately fail: they buy a temporary respite from the accelerating collapse, but they cannot reverse the decline as they leave the structural causes of the financial imbalances intact. In the end, I believe that the yen will indeed burn to a crisp (as will the euro and the British pound) and that Japan will ultimately drag the United States with it.

We'll know it when it happens

Unfortunately, predicting the timing of all these events is out of the question. Note, my original article about Japan being the harbinger of bad things to come is over 16 years old, and its predictions are yet to unfold in full. US/Japanese joint yen rescue operation may not be over yet. Further efforts to boost the yen could be successful, especially if they trigger large-scale short covering in the markets.

Namely, global investors and traders have accumulated the largest short position on record against the yen. Panicked short-covering could give another boost to the yen in the near term, but in the end, the predictable disintegration of Japan's fiscal and economic position is now all but inevitable.

What happens next

Reiterating my earlier prediction with relation to this crisis, we can make three predictions about Japan’s economy:

► We'll see a period of stagflation (inflation+recession), the inflation part could ultimately morph into hyperinflation;
► Interest rates will continue to rise, and the price of Japanese Government Bonds will collapse. I believe that the unraveling could resemble what Germany had experienced 100 years ago;

► The Nikkei could continue to rally (for now)—as currency and debt turn worthless, equities tend to go vertical as we saw in many cases through history, including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Argentina, Israel, and the Weimar Republic too.

Thus, as Japan's inflation accelerates, the Nikkei could continue to soar. However, the nominal gains in stocks will be more than offset by their losses in yen, still leaving investors with close to total losses in real terms. The reason why even real assets turn worthless is that inflation indiscriminately annihilates the purchasing power in an economy. When everyone’s purchasing power converges on zero, we really get the great reset: owning nothing minus being happy.

 

Quoted from:

Alex Krainer (August 17, 2026) - Japan financial tsunami barreling for the US. 

How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle | Ray Dalio

The big cycle is the period from one era of great change and turbulence, in which various systems or orders are transformed, typically through fighting, to the next. Then, through that evolutionary process, we arrive at yet another period of breakdown. The last big cycle began in 1945 at the end of World War II.

 

» This will lead to dramatic changes. «

 

Within that world order, there are shorter-term cycles, like the economic and political cycles. The economic cycles have lasted for about six years from one recession to the next, and they unfold in a way where the economy is weak.  

 

 » In considering which spending to cut, when one looks at the possibilities, one quickly notices that about 70% of the non-

interest spending is considered “mandatory”—i.e., it is either contractually required or politically nearly impossible to cut. «

 

Central banks put a lot of money and credit into it. That causes markets to go up. There's a lot of spending; it gets too hot; inflation rises. They tighten monetary policy, and that causes the economy to go down into recession. Since 1945, there have been twelve and a half of those.

 

» It appears clear that, as the gaps in people’s productivity, wealth, and values grow along with

levels of dissatisfaction about how their democracies are working, it leads to more populist conflict 

and more policies that are like those in the 1905-14 and the 1933-38 periods. «

Average global levels of political polarization since 1900.

 

We sometimes don't pay as much attention to the big cycle when it reaches excesses, such as debt excesses. This is because debts rise relative to incomes. If you look at a chart of most countries, their debts keep rising relative to their incomes, but the incomes are needed to pay the debts. So, when you get to a point where the debts are high relative to the incomes, and debt service is very expensive and starts to crowd out other spending, and investors do not want to hold the debt as much because the debt does not provide them good returns and they start to sell that debt, you begin to have a change in that big debt cycle.

 

 » For the United States, the big cycles look mostly unfavorable. «

 Ray Dalio's “Power Index” for great powers and empires over time.

 

That big debt cycle typically corresponds with the big domestic political and social cycle because wealth and well-being matter to people. When there's disruption to people's wealth and well-being, then you have political disruption, such as what we are experiencing now. Consequently, there's more fighting over wealth and power, and so on. These things come together, which then creates the new conflicts, the new big conflicts: the changes and breaking down of the old orders, the old monetary orders, the old domestic political order, the geopolitical order, and such things to cause seismic shifts. These are periods of great risk for the markets and great risk for society. It's very important that they're understood.

Quoted from: 
Ray Dalio (May 28, 2025) - The Big Cycle Explained in 3 Minutes. (video)

Countries are allowing their reserves or assets to decline while acquiring gold. Central banks bought more gold 

in 2025 than in any year in history. They are not telling the public why, but their actions speak volumes.

See also:

Ray Dalio (2025) - How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle (Principles). 

Ray Dalio (October 30, 2025) - Gold is the Safest Money. 

Ray Dalio (April 7, 2025) - Don't Make the Mistake of Thinking That What's Now Happening is Mostly About Tariffs. 

Ray Dalio (March 26, 2017) - The Developed World Populism Index.

Martin Armstrong  (October 24, 2025) - "The United States Is Due for Another Massive Civil War". 

Don't Think That What's Now Happening Is Mostly About Tariffs | Ray Dalio

At this moment, a huge amount of attention is being justifiably paid to the announced tariffs and their very big impacts on markets and economies while very little attention is being paid to the circumstances that caused them and the biggest disruptions that are likely still ahead. 

 

Don't get me wrong, while these tariff announcements are very important developments and we all know that President Trump caused them, most people are losing sight of the underlying circumstances that got him elected president and brought these tariffs about. They are also mostly overlooking the vastly more important forces that are driving just about everything, including the tariffs.  

 The 80 Year Big Debt Cycle.

The far bigger, far more important thing to keep in mind is that we are seeing a classic breakdown of the major monetary, political, and geopolitical orders. This sort of breakdown occurs only about once in a lifetime, but they have happened many times in history when similar unsustainable conditions were in place. More specifically:

 

1. The monetary/economic order is breaking down because there is too much existing debt, the rates of adding to it are too fast, and existing capital markets and economies are supported by this unsustainably large debt. The debt is unsustainable because the of the large imbalance between a) debtor-borrowers who owe too much debt and are taking on too much debt because they are hooked on debt to finance their excesses (e.g., the United States) and b) lender-creditors (like China) who already hold too much of the debt and are hooked on selling their goods to the borrower-debtors (like the United States) to sustain their economies. 

 

» We are seeing a classic breakdown of the major monetary, political, and geopolitical orders. « 

There are big pressures for these imbalances to be corrected one way or another and doing so will change the monetary order in major ways. For example, it is obviously incongruous to have both large trade imbalances and large capital imbalances in a deglobalizing world in which the major players can't trust that the other major players won't cut them off from the items they need (which is an American worry) or pay them the money they are owed (which is a Chinese worry). This is a result of these parties being in a type of war in which self-sufficiency is of paramount importance. Anyone who has studied history knows that such risks under such circumstances have repeatedly led to the same sorts of problems we're seeing now. 

 

Ray Dalio breaks down the Long Debt Cycle.

 

So, the old monetary/economic order in which countries like China manufacture inexpensively, sell to Americans, and acquire American debt assets, and Americans borrow money from countries like China to make those purchases and build up huge debt liabilities will have to change. These obviously unsustainable circumstances are made even more so by the fact that they have led to American manufacturing deteriorating, which both hollows out middle class jobs in the US and requires America to import needed items from a country that it is increasingly seeing as an enemy. In an era of deglobalization, these big trade and capital imbalances, which reflect trade and capital interconnectedness, will have to shrink one way or another. 

 

  From Trade War to Financial War.

Chinese Embassy in the US, April 11, 2025.

Also, it should be obvious that the US government debt level and the rate at which the government debt is being added to is unsustainable. (You can find my analysis of this in my new book How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle.)  Clearly, the monetary order will have to change in big disruptive ways to reduce all these imbalances and excesses, and we are in the early part of the process of it changing. There are huge capital market implications to this that have huge economic implications, which I will delve into at another time.  

2. The domestic political order is breaking down due to huge gaps in people's education levels, opportunity levels, productivity levels, income and wealth levels, and values—and because of the ineffectiveness of the existing political order to fix things. These conditions are manifest in win-at-all-cost fights between populists of the right and populists of the left over which side will have the power and control to run things. This is leading to democracies breaking down because democracies require compromise and adherence to the rule of law, and history has shown that both break down at times like those we are now in. History also shows that strong autocratic leaders emerge as classic democracy and classic rule of law are removed as barriers to autocratic leadership. Obviously, the current unstable political situation will be affected by the other four forces I’m referring to here—e.g., problems in the stock market and economy will likely create political and geopolitical problems.  
 

 » Tariffs on US goods will rise to 125% — and this will be our final adjustment.
Regardless of future US actions, China will no longer respond. «
China's Customs Tariff Commission, April 11, 2025.

3. The international geopolitical world order is breaking down because the era of one dominant power (the US) that dictates the order that other countries follow is over. The multilateral, cooperative world order the US led is being replaced by a unilateral, power-rules approach. In this new order, the US is still largest power in the world and is shifting to a unilateral, "America first" approach. We are now seeing that manifest in the US led trade-war, geopolitical war, technology war, and, in some cases, military wars.  
 

4. Acts of nature (droughts, floods and pandemics) are increasingly disruptive, and
 

5. Amazing changes in technology such as AI will be highly impactful to all aspects of life, including the money/debt/ economic order, the political order, the international order (by affecting interactions between countries economically and militarily), and the costs of acts of nature. 

 

 Shadowboxing in a hall of mirrors:

On April 12, Trump excluded smartphones and electronics
from his April 9, 125% tariff on China.

Changes in these forces and how they are affecting each other is what we should be focusing on. For that reason, I urge you to not to let news-grabbing dramatic changes like the tariffs draw your attention away from these five big forces and their interrelationships, which are the real drivers of Overall Big Cycles changes. 

 

Ray Dalio, founder of the world’s largest hedge fund, said mismanaged global tariffs and economic

policies could push the US economy, already nearing recession, into a far worse crisis, April 13, 2025.

[...] I also urge you to think about the interrelationships that are critically important. For example, think about how  Donald Trump's actions on tariffs will affect 1) the monetary/market, economy order (it will be disruptive to it), 2) the domestic political order (it will likely be disruptive to it as it will probably undermine his support), 3) the international geopolitical order (it will be disruptive to it in many obvious ways that are financial, economic, political, and geopolitical) 4) climate (it will somewhat undermine the world’s ability to deal with the climate change issue effectively), and 5) technology development (it will be disruptive in some positive ways to the US, like bringing more technology production into the US, and in some harmful ways, like being disruptive to the capital markets that are needed to support technology development and in too many other ways to innumerate here.)
 

Quoted from:
Ray Dalio (April 7, 2025) - Don't Make the Mistake of Thinking That What's Now Happening is Mostly About Tariffs.

 

See also:
Ray Dalio (March 26, 2025) - How Countries Go Broke: The Overall Big Cycle.

Lu QiYuan (December 8, 2024) - Scott Bessent's Covert MAGA Strategy for Trump 2.0.  

Trump commenting on how much money his billionaire friends made when he paused

tariffs on Wednesday, April 9: "He made $2.5 billion today, and he made $900 million". 

Corruption, insider trading, or just good timing and coincidence? 

April 10, 2025.