getty
On a recent New York-Tokyo flight, I bumped into a former Bank of Japan official. A senior, battle-tested one who’d ostensibly seen it all. He was on the job amid the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Russia’s default in 1998, the Lehman Brothers crash in 2008, the “taper tantrum” of 2013, the Donald Trump 1.0 era and Covid-19.
Naturally, I asked him what he made of the Trump 2.0 trade war shaking up Asia. “I keep thinking of the Far Side,” he quipped, referring to Gary Larson’s anthropomorphic comic strip of old.
One in particular, he said, depicting airline pilots warning their 300 passengers of turbulence to come. In the next panel, we see that the pilots are swinging the yoke wildly back and forth, creating havoc for fun.
“We’re all on that plane now, with Trump at the controls creating chaos for his amusement,” he said. “But Asia sure isn’t amused.”
Neither are bond investors, which only means…
