Money, taxation, central banking, and freedom — exposing how the state expands its claim on your life, labour, and wealth.
patelankeet.substack.com (https://patelankeet.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast)
Episode 44: Part 2: The Thirty-Year Hangover!! — And What Kenji Should Have Done!!
Imagine investing your life savings... and waiting 34 YEARS for the stock market to recover.
Not five years. Not ten. Not even twenty.
THIRTY-FOUR YEARS!
That’s how long Japan’s stock market took to regain its 1989 peak.
By the time it recovered, careers had ended, children had grown up, and an entire generation had watched its financial dreams disappear.
The markets eventually recovered. But the time investors lost? That was gone forever.
And here’s the frightening question...
COULD THE SAME THING HAPPEN TO YOUR PENSION?
In this explosive episode of Taxed & Taken, we uncover:
* Why Japan never bounced back — and how its banks helped trap the economy for decades.
* Three warning signs flashing TODAY — expensive American shares, pensions concentrated in a handful of technology giants, and governments drowning in debt.
* The AI bubble question — are we repeating Japan’s biggest investment mistake?
* The £100-a-month strategy — what Kenji could have done differently, and why it matters for your financial future.
Japan’s companies weren’t rubbish. They were among the greatest businesses on Earth.
Investors weren’t wrong about the companies. They were wrong about the PRICE!
And with billions invested in today’s technology giants, that lesson has never felt more relevant.
🎧 EPISODE 44: THE THIRTY-YEAR HANGOVER — AND WHAT KENJI SHOULD HAVE DONE
Taxed & Taken: The Podcast They Don’t Want You To Hear.
Before you invest another pound... ask yourself: Do you actually know what you’re paying for?
Get full access to Taxed & Taken: Money, Power & Freedom from the State at patelankeet.substack.com/subscribe (https://patelankeet.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
2 Oct 2026
Episode 43: The Bubble That Stole 34 Years — How Japan Built the Machine
On 29 December 1989, Japan’s stock market closed at a record high.
For millions of ordinary people, it felt like the country had cracked the code.
Homes had multiplied in value. Shares had surged. Banks were lending freely. Japanese companies were buying trophy assets across the world.
And there was a growing belief that Japan was different.
That the old rules no longer applied.
Then the bubble burst.
The Nikkei eventually lost around 80% from its peak. Land prices collapsed. Golf memberships that had once traded for extraordinary sums became almost worthless. Homeowners were left owing mortgages on properties worth far less than they had paid.
But the crash itself is not the most important part of this story.
The truly extraordinary part is that it took more than 34 years for the Japanese stock market to return to its 1989 peak.
In this episode of Taxed & Taken, we go back to the beginning and uncover how the machine was built:
Cheap money. Easy credit. Soaring property prices. Rising collateral. More borrowing. Even higher prices.
We look at the Plaza Accord, Japan’s aggressive interest-rate cuts, the lending boom that followed, and the powerful story that convinced an entire country that extraordinary prices were perfectly rational.
And we follow “Kenji” — an ordinary Japanese worker who thought he was becoming wealthy simply by owning a home and some shares at exactly the right moment.
Until everything changed.
Because every great bubble eventually reaches the same question:
What happens when prices stop going up?
This is Part 1 of Japan’s Thirty-Year Hangover.
And once you understand how the machine was built, the parallels with today become much harder to ignore.
Taxed & Taken — The Podcast They Don’t Want You To Hear.
Get full access to Taxed & Taken: Money, Power & Freedom from the State at patelankeet.substack.com/subscribe (https://patelankeet.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
25 Sept 2026
Episode 42: The Great De-valuation — How the West Could Inflate Away Its Debt
Britain owes more than £3 trillion. America owes tens of trillions of dollars. Across the developed world, governments have accumulated debts that look almost impossible to repay.
So how does this end?
There are only a handful of possibilities.
Cut spending.Raise taxes.Grow the economy fast enough to outrun the debt.Default.
Or there is another option.
Inflation.
Not hyperinflation. Not wheelbarrows of cash. Not the pound collapsing overnight.
Something much quieter.
Imagine inflation averaging 3–4% for 10, 15 or 20 years.
Prices rise. Wages rise. House prices rise. Tax revenues rise.
But much of yesterday’s debt remains fixed in nominal pounds.
The government can repay every £100 it borrowed. Nobody defaults. Every bond is honoured.
There is just one catch:
the £100 it eventually repays buys far less than the £100 it originally borrowed.
At 4% inflation for 15 years, £100 of future purchasing power is equivalent to only around £56 today.
And that changes almost everything.
In this episode of Taxed & Taken, we look at:
* why heavily indebted governments have an incentive to tolerate inflation;
* the five realistic ways a country can escape a debt crisis;
* how inflation can make fixed debt smaller in real terms;
* why a £180,000 house could become £324,000 without necessarily making its owner richer;
* why borrowers with fixed nominal debt can benefit while cash savers lose purchasing power;
* how frozen tax thresholds allow governments to collect more tax without increasing headline rates;
* how Britain reduced debt from around 252% of GDP after WWII to 62% by 1971, even while the nominal national debt itself increased;
* how financial repression helped make that possible;
* and why the same strategy would be much harder to execute today.
Because this isn’t simply a story about government debt.
It’s about your mortgage, your savings, your pension, your salary, your property and what your money will actually buy in fifteen years’ time.
The most important number in your financial life may not be the number of pounds you own.
It may be their purchasing power.
🎧 Listen to Episode 42: The Great De-valuation — How the West Could Inflate Away Its Debt
Get full access to Taxed & Taken: Money, Power & Freedom from the State at patelankeet.substack.com/subscribe (https://patelankeet.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)
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