from Zero Hedge
While this all started with a currency “war,” it seems – according to a stunningly candid transcript of Japan’s finance minister’s conversation with none other than Paul Krugman – that the real endgame here is actual war. Aso remarked that “a similar [deflationary mindset] had occurred in the US in the 1930s. What solved the question? War! Because World War II had occurred during the 1940s and that became the solution for the United States. [We] have to switch [the Japanese] mindset… we are looking for the trigger.“
Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been the most hawkishly militaristic PM of a generation, shifting from the passive society to an aggressor, beginning around 2013. This has only been emboldened by rising nationalism and escalatuing tensions in the South China Sea.