I was doing my morning reading prior to the release of NFP, and came across this article from Bloomberg. The article is about Takeshi Fujimaki. In addition to being a “former adviser” to George Soros, he won a seat in Japan’s upper house of parliament last month. He calls the JGB market a bubble which has been said before but the very last paragraph blew me away:

“It’s impossible to avoid a default at this point, but what’s important is to create a system to avoid the same mistake and that’s where I can contribute as a politician,” Fujimaki said.

By the way, I found the above paragraph even more staggering than the one before it. In the paragraph before, Fujimaki said that “The yen’s fundamentals suggest to me it should be around 180 to 200 per dollar.”

Wow. We have all read (and re-read) Kyle Bass on how Japan is about to implode (I’ll add that I am a fan of Bass). There is a massive difference, however, between a hedge fund manager suggesting JGB’s collapse and an elected politician (even if ex-hedge fund) comes out and tells the world that a JGB default is inevitable.