The government of Thailand decided to impose restrictions on any currency sales of $20,000 or more, unless the purpose of the sale is for trade.
Setting trading limits killed their trust with the markets in one move. Now they have to go back and start building trust again, and it will never be the same. Contrast this to Lula in Brazil, who was just named the best president in history or some such silly thing. The didn’t trust him on day one, now the markets love him.

The Japanese market took forever to bottom. Our S&L scandal was lightening fast comparatively and it still took a while. For a market to hit bottom, you have to flush out all the sellers and the Japanese, perhaps for cultural reasons, don’t like taking losses, so they hung on and didn’t bankrupt the banks nor the property owners in a large way. That cleansing, is far more likely here than there.

Canada is sitting on a huge oil field if the price gets high enough to start to make the separation of the oil from the sand (shale) worth it. But that’s not all they have going for them. They are more than just natural resources. I like Canada a lot. Been there many times, especially when Vancouver was booming. Oh, if it was just a bit warmer… 😉