Japan Is About to Pop the Biggest Bubble in History, and it Takes Us With It (Video)

In this 25 July 2026 published video, host economist Peter Schiff argues that Japan’s massive debt and trapped monetary policy constitute a “pin” that could trigger a collapse of a global asset bubble. The scenario suggests that Japanese efforts to defend the Yen through selling US Treasuries and unwinding carry trades could cause a sharp spike in US yields and market disruption. The yen just hit a 40-year low and Japan is trapped. Whether they hike or freeze, it ends the same way: the pin that pricks our bubble.

Investors are far too complacent about risks that are now hiding in plain sight. The AI trade cracked this week: Alphabet fell 10 percent after announcing even higher CapEx, Oracle is down 41 percent on the year, Meta and Amazon fell, and Microsoft is nearly in a bear market. SpaceX now trades 49 percent below its post-IPO high with its float set to jump from 5 percent to 40 percent by year end, and Tesla dropped 18 percent, costing Elon Musk nearly $100 billion in a week. Peter Schiff compares the roughly three-quarters of a trillion dollars in annual AI CapEx to the dot-com build-out, where the early favorites went bankrupt and took their vendors down with them.

The yen fell to a 40-year low against the dollar, the 30-year JGB yield hit an all-time high near 4 percent, and with debt above 200 percent of GDP and a policy rate still at just 1 percent, Japan is trapped. Whether the Bank of Japan finally hikes aggressively or stays timid, the result spills into the United States, potentially forcing the world’s largest holder of US Treasuries to dump its $1.1 trillion position. Schiff calls Japan the pin that pricks the far bigger US bubble. Meanwhile the US 30-year yield hit a 20-year high of 5.16 percent on more than four times the debt of 2006, oil is up 30 percent in July guaranteeing a hotter CPI, and gold rose on the week even as bonds and stocks fell, with the miners signaling a bottom. He closes on why record-low jobless claims are meaningless in a gig economy and why Trump’s new slave-labor tariffs are an unconstitutional tax on Americans.

https://youtu.be/tftU8BKWBs0

Chapters:
00:00 Japan Sparks US Crisis
00:41 AI CapEx Reality Check
07:51 AI Bubble Parallels
13:03 Gold Miners Rebound
19:17 Oil Bonds Warning Signs
32:16 Japan Debt Rate Trap
34:36 Weak Yen Trade Deficits
37:22 Japan Creditor Status Slips
41:22 Two Japan Crisis Paths
44:26 US Vulnerability Dominoes
45:21 Unemployment Claims Hype
47:20 Why Claims Mislead
51:37 New Tariffs Legal Workaround
59:03 Wrap Up Subscribe Call