For years, Japan was the unicorn of sovereign finance. A high-debt, low-yield creature that managed to live peacefully in the wild without alarming investors. With net public debt peaking at 162% of GDP in 2020, and 30-year bonds yielding as little as 0.1%, Japan offered a reassuring lesson: deficits might be forever, and gravity could be optional, provided you printed your own currency and maintained a cultural aversion to panic.But unicorns, it turns out, grow old too. And lately, the beast has begun to wheeze.
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