With Japanese bond yields recently hitting record highs and bond market volatility soaring, overnight Reuters floated a trial balloon that Japan's central bank may pause the unwinding of its massive debt holdings next fiscal year, which would give Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi some relief amid growing investor concerns about her growing spending plans.
A pause would mark a turning point in the Bank of Japan's quantitative tightening plan - started in 2024 as part of Governor Kazuo Ueda's efforts to unwind a decade-long, massive stimulus which everyone said would result in failure. Well, there it is. The next step, of course, is more QE.
According to Reuters, which is well known for being the mouthpiece of BOJ insiders, at its June 15-16 meeting, the Japanese central bank will review its bond taper plan running through March next year and lay out a new plan for fiscal 2027. With no change expected to the existing taper plan, markets are focusing on whether the BOJ would keep reducing its monthly bond purchases in fiscal 2027 or maintain the current pace.
While there is no consensus yet within the BOJ on the final decision, a pause in taper is increasingly seen as the preferred option with uncertainty over the Iran war keeping bond markets jittery, said two sources familiar with the deliberations.
"Markets remain volatile, so there's no need to rush," one of them said on the BOJ's taper, adding that many market players appeared to favor maintaining the current pace of buying. Ironically, the market volatility is precisely the reason to rush.
Political considerations may also push the BOJ to pause as rising bond yields threaten to confine Takaichi's spending plans. "What the administration wants to avoid most is rises in bond yields," said one of the sources. Of course, if the intention is to avoid bond yields from surging, it's far too late.
Japan's 20Y bond yield rises as high as 3.511%, highest since 1996 as global interest rates go vertical pic.twitter.com/Rc1gKjfGyo
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) May 13, 2026Confirming the end of the QT is effectively a done deal, some investors are now calling on the BOJ to pause its bond taper plan, a central bank survey earlier this month showed, highlighting the challenge it faces in reducing its massive Japanese government bonds (JGB) holdings.
Even before the Reuters report, there had already been some indications the BOJ might consider slowing its taper plan amid market uncertainty. A clearer signal on the BOJ's taper plan will come next week, when the central bank releases minutes of its meeting with bond market participants held on May 21-22.
"We've seen a pretty fast rise in bond yields, which makes it hard for investors to buy bonds. The finance ministry may be getting worried too," said former BOJ official Nobuyasu Atago. "Given the political headwinds, I see no reason for the BOJ to keep tapering next fiscal year," he said.
Concerns over Japan's worsening finances and rising inflation pushed up the 10-year JGB yield to a 30-year high of 2.8% last week, nearing the 3% estimate the finance ministry set in compiling its fiscal 2026 budget. A rise above 3% would boost debt servicing costs and reduce scope for other spending.
The BOJ's rate-hike decision may also affect its taper plan with an increase in short-term rates to 1% from 0.75% seen as a strong possibility at the June meeting. While the central bank has said its taper program has no monetary policy implications, the case for slowing QT becomes stronger if it pushes through a hike, something it has been woefully unable to do so far despite a collapsing yen.
"With the bond market so unstable, it would be natural for the BOJ to play it safe and avoid causing undue market turbulence," said Mari Iwashita, executive rates strategist at Nomura Securities, who projects a taper pause in fiscal 2027.
"A combination of a taper pause and rate hike would be a good one," as the former will ease upward pressure on yields, while the latter would alleviate concern the BOJ is behind the curve in addressing inflationary risks, she said.
It's not just Japan: rising debt and volatile yields have heightened challenges for central banks unwinding their balance sheets that ballooned from years of heavy asset purchases to reflate their economies. In the US, analysts doubt whether new Fed chief Kevin Warsh can push through his calls for a smaller balance sheet as U.S. Treasuries lose their luster.
The BOJ has also been cautious in its QT program which started in 2024, and under which the central bank gradually reduced purchases and currently trims monthly buying by 200 billion yen each quarter.
Political hurdles for the BOJ's QT have heightened under Takaichi, who has vowed to cut tax and boost spending by issuing even more debt in the world's most indebted economy.
Taper or not, a reduction in the BOJ's holdings, currently at around 500 trillion yen, will proceed steadily due to the runoff of maturing JGBs that already shaved 20% off its balance sheet from a peak in late 2023.
That's all the more reason for the BOJ to maintain the current pace of buying, said former BOJ executive Akira Otani, currently at Goldman Sachs Japan.
"When inflationary risks from the Middle East conflict and the government's proactive fiscal policy are putting upward pressure on bond yields, proceeding with further tapering could cause political friction by pushing up yields," he said.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 17:20Authored by James Howard Kunstler,
In the annals of Deep State WTF-ery, is there a stranger case than CIA officer David Rush turning up with $40-million in 303 one-kilogram gold bars, plus $2-million in cash, plus a stash of 30 mostly Rolex watches?
Well, yeah, the stranger story is how the guy got hired by the CIA in the first place.
Rush was arrested on Monday, May 18, by an FBI SWAT team at his home in Loudoun County, VA. Agents searched the house all day long and found the stash. Rush is currently charged with theft of public money and allegedly falsifying his military and academic credentials to obtain federal employment benefits, including roughly $77,000 in improper military leave pay. He’s scheduled to make a federal court appearance in Alexandria today.
Rush first applied for a job at the CIA in March 2006. He claimed to have a bachelor’s degree in math from Clemson University and a master’s from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). He was rejected. He reapplied later that same year. Bumped again. He reapplied again in 2009, adding a new credential: that he’d been a US Navy test pilot and flight trainer. This time, he was hired.
Rush’s college credentials were found to be false, but it is unclear when that was discovered. Since he included them in his two earlier 2006 failed applications, why were they not flagged in his successful 2009 application? His claim of being a US Navy pilot was also found to be false (he was an information systems tech in his Navy service). The FBI affidavit unsealed recently details the pattern of lies across all applications.
Understand that CIA vetting procedures are supposed to be exceedingly rigorous. The process is stressful and invasive — many candidates drop out or are weeded out. The background check involves interviews with practically everybody who knows the applicant going back decades, his criminal history, work, financial history, education, military service. The applicant gets a polygraph exam. Even after getting hired, monitoring continues.
Rush was hired at the very start of the Obama admin; Leon Panetta was the newly appointed CIA Director. Wouldn’t you like to hear him ‘splain how David Rush managed to get hired? Was somebody smoothing his way in? Rush rose to become a senior executive service (SES) officer with a top-secret (TS/SCI) security clearance. His exact duties, the division he worked for, his day-to-day responsibilities have not been disclosed.
Rush allegedly requested the gold and foreign currency from the CIA for “work-related expenses” between November 2025 and March 2026. The agency later could not account for the assets or locate records explaining their official purpose. A search of a storage locker at CIA connected to Rush turned up only a small amount of the requisitioned cash.
“There is a whole process that we go through to get that money. I don’t just walk into the logistics office and say ‘Excuse me, I need $100,000 tomorrow.’ There is a form I have to fill out. It’s not a bank vault you walk into. It doesn’t work like that.” — Tracy Walder, 46, a former FBI special agent and CIA officer, quoted in The New York Post.
Wouldn’t you assume that some higher-up CIA officer would have to sign off on such a colossal requisition of gold and money? (And where does the CIA get so much gold on-demand?) Perhaps the very Director of the CIA approved it — which would be John Ratcliffe through 2025 up to right now. Doesn’t he have some ‘splainin’ to do? (Was Rush set-up? Was this a sting?)
Assuming Rush spent some period of time as an entry-level CIA employee, when did his rise to SES level happen? John Brennan became CIA Director in early 2013 (the start of Barack Obama’s second term). What were David Rush’s relations with John Brennan? Was Brennan his mentor? Does the gold stash have any connection with the current legal problems of John Brennan and other former high officials involved in the long-running “grand conspiracy” case about the attempted overthrow of a president?
You might imagine that Rush’s phone and computers were seized in the May 18th raid on his house — though it’s unlikely he used such conventional channels for black ops chatter. It’s conceivable, though, that any alt-communications of his were captured by the vast national security surveillance apparatus, and that DNI Tulsi Gabbard might have come across them this past year. How else might Director Ratcliffe have been tipped off?
This story is not going away. The scale of the grift is spectacular and vivid — 303 gold bars! — like a Hollywood movie. Rush’s explanation of “work-related expenses” sounds preposterous. If the requisitions were made serially, over several months, as appears, then the agency had more than one opportunity to review and question them.
Rush faked his entire back-story. How incompetent (or corrupt) are the agency’s past managers that he got away with it for so long? How many other gross fakers, rogues, grifters, and tools are embedded in the agency, and who are they really working for? The institutional embarrassment is monumental. Trust in the so-called Intel Community is at an all-time low.
Indictments and trials are coming.
This is the Deep State on parade like a naked emperor.
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 17:00Last year, readers were briefed on what was then the investigative phase into dark-money-funded NGOs and alleged foreign influence operations routed through far-left activist networks. These NGOs and activist networks advance anti-capitalist agendas, mobilize protests and riots to fuel unrest under the banner of toxic social justice, and have also served as a permanent protest-industrial complex designed to delay, deny, and destroy President Trump's pro-America agenda.
Fast forward to late spring, and there now appears to be a clear transition inside parts of the Trump administration from the investigative phase to the action phase.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled just that during a Thursday press briefing.
Here, the exchange between a reporter and Bessent suggests the potential enforcement phase has already begun:
Reporter: "I want to ask you about Antifa. In October, the Treasury Department started working with the FBI to investigate who's funding Antifa. Can you give us an update on that investigation? How close are you guys finding out who is funding it?"
Scott Bessent: "It is ongoing. We made substantial progress, and I think in the weeks and months ahead, we are going to have a lot to report""
(Bessent continues on IRS guidance for nonprofits): "The IRS is now giving guidance on the Form 990, which nonprofits they have to file. We are going to demand that nonprofits know their grant recipients. So if a grant recipient is violent, if they are suppressing people's rights, then YOU are responsible for that. And I think that's a very good first step."
Watch the Exchange:
🚨 WOW! Scott Bessent just revealed the IRS has moved to make NGOs LIABLE for violent activity committed by their grant recipients like Antifa
George Soros has been put on NOTICE.
"The IRS is now giving guidance on the Form 990, which nonprofits they have to file. We are going… pic.twitter.com/15ToheHbwa
What's key to understand is that Bessent lays out a timeline of the action phase against the radical left that seeks revolution and routes its operations through dark-money-funded NGOs and activist groups.
We suspect that one of the key focuses is on U.S. Marxist tech financier Neville Roy Singham, who has reportedly been living in China and has been linked by The New York Times to CCP-aligned propaganda activist networks.
This week, far-left Turkish-American millionaire and Twitch streamer Hasan Piker committed an operational-security mistake by publicly identifying Singham as the "funding vehicle" for Marxist political movements in the U.S. routed through a network of nonprofits.
Piker revealed last week that he received a U.S. Treasury's "Requests for Information" subpoena over his "humanitarian trip" to Cuba with pro-China CodePink cofounder Susan Medea Benjamin. Keep in mind that CodePink is connected to the Singham network.
We've been early to the story of some nonprofits used as adversarial influence operations, as noted last year:
Last October, Seamus Bruner, Director of Research at the Government Accountability Institute, briefed President Trump on television about radical left NGOs and activist networks.
"We have identified dozens of radical organizations, not just the decentralized Antifa organizations, but dozens of radical organizations that have received more than $100 million from the Riot Inc investors," Bruner told Trump.
Source: Government Accountability Institute
This subject is near and dear to Elon Musk, who at the time commented on a video of Seamus briefing Trump.
Way more than $100M of US taxpayer money
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 8, 2025The best understanding we can provide readers is that the investigative phase into these radical-left NGOs has entered the action phase.
Hedge fund legend Kyle Bass noted, "SecScottBessent is doing God's work. Imagine if the IRS required a full donor list to be public to maintain the 501 (c) (3) ’s tax-exempt status."
Tyler Durden Fri, 05/29/2026 - 16:40