Japan has lots of assets like a massive sovereign wealth fund. When you subtract these assets from their debts, their debt to GDP ratio is 77%, which isn’t that high.
Japan takes money from its people in the form of taxes and then invests in assets like US treasury bonds. Because their currency depreciated over time, their debt has become worth less, while their foreign assets have become worth more.
This has benefited Japan a lot, but may backfire if the Yen goes up, foreign interest rates lower, or Japanese interest rates rise. If Japan has inflation, this could force them to raise interest rates or live with inflation.
“The president has been executing the program for white South Africans while canceling refugee programs for other groups.
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Initially, Trump’s resettlement program aimed to admit 7,500 South Africans, but on Monday, the White House said it will add 10,000 to that target, saying “unforeseen developments in South Africa created an emergency refugee situation.” Though Trump has become empathetic to this cause, his administration has otherwise mainly executed anti-immigration policies, like suspending the Refugee Admissions Program when he took office in 2025.”
Trump has left Europe looking for alternatives to US weapons, even if they are worse, weakening the alliance and losing US sales. If the world does take big strides away from US weapons, the US will have lost a lot of leverage.
Trump praised Xi like a sycophant. Xi did not return the words.
Trump has accelerated American decline. Further polarizing the country, getting the US into a so-far unsuccessful war with Iran, weakening relationships with allies, removing quality immigrants along with the bad ones, increasing corruption, weakening the ability of the country to tax its wealthy citizens, broad and unstrategic tariffs that weaken the US economy, etcetera…
The very wealthiest of Americans are not making money from work. Their wealth grows by capital appreciation, and they pay very little tax on that income. The estate tax is supposed to capture this at death, but it is riddled with loopholes.
It’s extremely unfair and makes the national debt worse.
Trump and his supporters grossly exaggerated political corruption and falsely called things corruption that were not. Trump was supposed to drain the swamp of corruption and clean the government. Instead, he has made the United States the swamp he and his supporters claimed it was.