Until the last few days, the attention of the mainstream business media has been on how ‘wonderful’ Japan’s policy prescription must be since its stock market is soaring at a record pace. The reality is that the far bigger JGB market has been crumbling. As we explained here, this is a major problem for the bubble-blowers, as the extreme volatility (VaR shock) that the Japanese Government Bond market has been through in the last few weeks has some very large and painful consequences, that as yet, have not been discussed widely. The term ‘shadow banking’ has been one ZH readers are by now extremely familiar with as we have discussed this as the panacea of unseen leverage (most recently in Europe and China) for years; the funding markets in Japan, so heavily reliant on JGB repo for short-term liquidity and the efficient functioning of two-way markets in the bonds, are hitting a wall. As JPMorgan notes, the number of JGB ‘fails’ – where a repo deal breaks down – has more than doubled in the last week. For a market that represents 40% of the total Japanese money-market, this will be a critical area to watch for a JGB waterfall.
