So as someone who has assets in Japan, what can I do to protect myself and maybe profit from the looming financial crisis? (reading those kind of articles makes me realize that I really need to read up on economy)
The basic idea if you believe that a hyperinflationary environment is coming, you borrow money to invest in hard assets and selected stocks. Hyperinflation will cause the value of the currency to fall dramatically, driving up the value of assets relative to that currency. This is why whenever you see countries devalue their currency to reflect rampant inflation (e.g. most recently Venezuela), people run out to buy whatever they can including TVs, disposable goods because these hold value better than cash.
Of course, if you're wrong and the opposite happens (e.g. deflation where currency rises in value but assets fall), you lose money. That said, I'd agree with the general fundamentals Evans-Pritchard describes - but also as he describes, it's basically unknowable when the crash will happen.
(By way of warning, when it comes to applying theory to practice, be careful when playing between various currencies - e.g. http://www.moneyweek.com/investments/what-is-the-carry-trade... - which is basically what happened when the markets started unravelling in North America)
FYI, investing the GLD ETF is the best practical way to buy gold:
Do you not recognize how often people used to say the same thing about US real estate before 2005?
If you want to hedge against inflation then might I suggest US currency? It's remarkably stable and inflates by only a 3-6 points most years: http://www.inflationdata.com/inflation/images/charts/Annual_...
Certainly the idea that gold is immune to inflation, overvalue or a bubble is entirely absurd and outright dangerous to the people who might fall into the trap of believing it.
[1] If someone had such an algorithm Wall Street financial firms would be making untold amounts of money off of it, most trading algorithms are just rough heuristics that happen to work, but rarely work for extensive periods of time or any specific claims.
The US dollar's value is dropping (and will continue to drop) sharply since they are printing them like mad. If the value of the dollar drops, the value of things relative to the dollar rises (like gold). There isn't a gold bubble, there's a dollar devaluation. The dollar may have been stable in the past, but those days are almost certainly over.
There may be flaws with the CPI-U data, but I don't know of a better data source. Feel free to point one out.
Until you do however, the data we've explored in this thread directly contradicts all of your assertions, despite their popularity among some.
But of course people just love to think about owning gold and that's what's really driving this madness.
I'd call him a nutter, but I don't think that's true. I think he's a smart fellow who recognizes that editorials that take extreme stances sell better than ones that don't... and hey, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.