Jason Douglas

As we mentioned earlier, the Bank of Japan is raising rates very slowly.

But we spoke to analysts at HSBC, for instance.

They were talking about how if rates got up to 1% or even 2% in Japan over the next few years, then we would really see a perceptible effect on global borrowing costs that we could attribute to Japanese investors' behavior.

Having said all that, the Japanese economy, it's not doing great.

I think there's still a bit of anxiety about growth.

There's a bit of anxiety about things like wages and so on.

And so some economists also think that maybe we won't see too many more rate rises by the Bank of Japan.

So we'll see how things go on the growth front.

My pleasure.

Thank you, Luke.

So Chinese military activity close to its neighbors in Asia is clearly not something that's new.

These joint patrols of Russian bombers, though near to Korea and Japan, are certainly notable for a couple of reasons.

One is the fact that this is a joint exercise.

Now, this was a long flight.

This was eight hours, according to the Russian state media.

The second reason why it's notable is this is, of course, happening at a time when tensions between China and Japan are pretty intense, right?

So there has been this sort of diplomatic spat, which has been rumbling on for a month now.

Beijing was extremely upset at some remarks that Japanese Prime Minister Sane Takeuchi made in Parliament about a month ago, where she said that it was a possibility that Japan could get pulled into any conflict over Taiwan.

So this is certainly something to take note of.

We haven't heard from any senior officials in the administration, which strikes many people as pretty unusual.