A Bankrupt World Is An Unstable World

Be prepared for the next great transfer of wealth. Buy physical silver and storable food.

dollarcollapse.com / By John Rubino / September 17, 2012

Remember when our problems were mostly just financial, when the scariest possibility was Greece leaving the eurozone and a few zombie banks evaporating? Those were the days.

This week, geopolitics — that is, guns, bombs, and ideology — pushed finance off the front burner. In the East China Sea, for instance, everyone has inexplicably become obsessed with a few barren islands and is apparently willing to trade blood for rocks:

Japanese firms shut plants in China as territorial row escalates

Major Japanese firms have closed their factories in China and urged expatriate workers on Monday to stay home ahead of what could be further angry protests over a territorial dispute that threatens to hurt trade ties between Asia’s two largest economies.

China’s worst outbreak of anti-Japan sentiment in decades led to weekend demonstrations and violent attacks on well-known Japanese businesses such as car-makers Toyota and Honda, forcing frightened Japanese citizens living in the country into hiding and prompting Chinese state media to warn that trade relations could now be in jeopardy.

“I’m not going out today and I’ve asked my Chinese boyfriend to be with me all day tomorrow,” said Sayo Morimoto, a 29-year-old Japanese graduate student at a university in Shenzhen.

Japanese housewife and mother Kayo Kubo, who lives in the eastern Chinese city of Suzhou, said her young family and other Japanese expats were also staying home, frightened by the scale and mood of this weekend’s protests in dozens of cities.

“There were so many people and I’ve never seen anything like it. It was very scary,” she said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei said the government would protect Japanese firms and citizens and called for protesters to obey the law.

“The gravely destructive consequences of Japan’s illegal purchase of the Diaoyu Islands are steadily emerging, and the responsibility for this should be born by Japan,” he said at a daily news briefing. The islands are called the Senkaku by Japan and Diaoyu by China.

“The course of developments will depend on whether or not Japan faces up to China’s solemn stance and whether or not it faces up to the calls for justice from the Chinese people and adopts a correct attitude and approach.”

China and Japan, which generated two-way trade of 345 billion dollars last year, are arguing over a group of uninhabited islets in the East China Sea, a long-standing dispute that erupted last week when the Japanese government decided to buy some of them from a private Japanese owner.

The move, which infuriated Beijing, was intended by Japan’s government to fend off what it feared would be seen as an even more provocative plan by the nationalist governor of Tokyo to buy and build facilities on the islands.

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Thanks to BrotherJohnF