I read this on the plane back to Texas in Dennis Gartman’s letter this morning, in which he quoted from the International Herald Tribune. It is about Japan, which is a slow-motion demographic train wreck. This degree of aging of a population in a developed country is something that has never happened. We can all think we can see the future, but not this time. We have no parallels in history. And we simply don’t know how the extreme aging of a major nation will affect its national psyche. We may think it will be "more of the same," but then have to look back and say, “How could we have missed it?” This piece is short but poignant, and more than a little sad. We introduce the Japanese term kodokushi. It is not a happy word.