Kyle Bass' Hayman Capital's Doomsday Scenario: Japan

From BusinessWeek:

Doom Heralded at Hayman by Widening Trade Deficit: Japan Credit

Japan’s worsening trade gap will make it harder to service the world’s largest debt, fulfilling part of the doomsday scenario that Hayman Capital Management LP is betting on. 

The nation’s 10-year note yield may rise toward 10 percent from the world’s third-lowest of 0.79 percent, while the yen weakens, said Richard Howard, who oversees Dallas, Texas-based Hayman’s Japan-focused fund with J. Kyle Bass. That would represent the developed world’s second-highest borrowing costs after Greece, and a surge to that level by the end of 2013 would cause losses of 42 percent for investors purchasing the securities now, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

Data yesterday showed Japan had its biggest half-year trade deficit on record. Hayman, which manages about $1 billion, made $500 million by predicting the U.S. housing market collapse, and Bass has said since at least 2010 that Japan’s $12 trillion bond market is heading for a crash. So far, the debt has returned 3.1 percent in the past two years, Bank of America Merrill Lynch data show, while yields touched nine-year lows.

“It all came down to this idea that there was an internal self-funding mechanism in Japan, that essentially the Japanese economy and interest-rate environment could exist separate to the rest of the world,” Howard, 32, said in an Oct. 18 interview in Singapore. “It wasn’t going to last forever, and in fact it is rapidly approaching a turning point.”

Japan’s imports exceeded exports by 3.22 trillion yen ($40 billion) in the six months ended Sept. 30, the biggest trade deficit for a fiscal half-year period, according to Ministry of Finance data going back to 1979. The nation posted a shortfall in September for a third-consecutive month.

Current Account
The country has public debt equivalent to 237 percent of gross domestic product this year, the biggest debt-to-GDP ratio globally, estimates by the International Monetary Fund show. The ratio for the U.S. is 107 percent....MUCH MORE

And from CNBC:



HT: Neo-Alpha