“Why would the Yen be so popular when the country is in shambles and about to go radioactive for 1,000 years?”
It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me. Especially since the Bank of Japan just printed the equivalent of two hundred billion U.S. to prop up their stock market, and presumably will keep printing for the purpose until the yen is worth less than the paper it’s printed on.
“Why would the Yen be so popular when the country is in shambles and about to go radioactive for 1,000 years?”
This is what happened here in 2008. People needed to raise cash to meet margin calls when Lehman fell.
In this case, the Japanese need cash to fix their country. So, they are bring their money home. When you have a whole country doing that, it increases the value of that currency, even if in the near future the GDP will be falling. They are selling off whatever they can to raise their personal cash levels.
It is very deflationary, and similar in the panic for cash that we experienced in 2008.