Japan discovers the price of money

Akshara· Host0:00

[upbeat music] In today's episode, we'll break down two important stories. First, we'll talk about Japan discovering the price of money, and then we'll talk about the tower of sovereign debt getting more twisted. Welcome back to The Daily Brief by Zerodha, where we cut through the noise to help you understand what's actually happening in the most important stories from business and markets. I'm your host, Dakshara. Today is Thursday, 18th June. Before we start the show, we'd like to tell you about a new podcast we just shot as part of our new initiative, Subtext. So India's EV adoption is now less dependent on the vehicles and more dependent on everything it plugs into, like the charger, the connector, the software, the protocols that charging networks use to talk to one another, and most importantly, the aging Indian electricity grid beneath all of it. Now, to make sense of all of this, we spoke to Zora Khan, founder and CEO of IPEC, which designs and manufactures EV chargers for India's leading two and three-wheeler OEMs, to understand what it actually takes to build charging infrastructure at scale in India. The link to the podcast is in the description below. Coming to the first story. At the end of March 2025, Japanese households held more than half their financial assets in cash and bank deposits. Globally, this is an unusual way to hold one's wealth, at least in advanced economies. In the United States, for instance, cash makes up just 11.5% of household financial assets. Meanwhile, over 40%