Stock markets continue to go down, the uber wealthy gather in Davos and populist sentiment turns against the media nominated heroes of the past decade. Nothing can equal the collective outrage poured on John Thain from Merrill Lynch for first asking for a huge bonus and then denying he had made the request and then the item that seems to have stuck most in the collective gizzard of the public was his extravagant refit of his office which he took on soon after taking over the troubled giant.

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It is the Tokyo MadHatter back from last time, I hope we didn’t put you off following financial matters too much. A lot of financial commentators are told to make things sound good, especially the paid ones, well I prefer to tell it as it is.

So, to cap off the last blog, I will admit it, I did recommend Gold and Silver. Everyone knows, or at least everyone knows that during a crisis, people sell other “risky” assets, and try to buy less risky assets, ie the famous “flight-to-quality”. Now, as we non-North Americans also know, US Treasury bonds used to be considered the best “less risky asset” and were always the beneficiary of any flight to quality movement.

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It has been a few years since the Tokyo MadHatter last wrote publicly about markets, but we’ve been watching things from the quiet backwaters of a cash flow strong industry sector here in Japan that has very little exposure to global financial markets. (more…)