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For the first time in 34 years, Japan 🇯🇵 is no longer the world's largest lending nation. This position now belongs to Germany 🇩🇪. Although Japan still maintains a record level of foreign assets, Germany has surpassed it thanks to strong export activity and earning more money from the world than it spends. Additionally, the appreciation of the euro against the yen has made Germany's assets, when calculated in yen, appear larger.
Japan's foreign assets have mainly increased due to the weakening yen and Japanese companies investing more abroad, especially in the US and UK, in sectors such as finance, insurance, and retail.
One of the main reasons for the weakness of the yen is Japan's ultra-loose monetary policy – that is, the printing of money and maintaining very low interest rates for an extended period. However, instead of leading to economic growth as expected, this policy has resulted in an increase in capital outflow. This is a real example showing that 'printing money and lowering interest rates' can solve some problems... until it itself becomes a major problem.
This situation reflects the fragility of the current monetary system, as it relies on trust, public debt, and unlimited money printing by central banks.
In the context of increasing risks as it is now, investors are divided into two directions: one group seeks venture investment opportunities to achieve higher returns; the other group turns to assets that can maintain long-term value and are not affected by monetary policy fluctuations, such as Bitcoin or gold. These assets are increasingly seen as effective means to hedge against risks in the global financial system.$BTC
