Tag Archives: Japan

The Fukushima nuclear meltdown continues unabated, by Helen Caldicott

Posted on January 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

It looks like Fukushima’s radiation will be leaking into the surrounding Japanese countryside and the Pacific ocean until the end of time. From Helen Caldicott at independentaustralia.net:

Satellite image shows damage at Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (via ecowatch.com).

Dr Helen Caldicott, explains recent robot photos taken of Fukushima’s Daiichi nuclear reactors: radiation levels have not peaked, but have continued to spill toxic waste into the Pacific Ocean — but it’s only now the damage has been photographed.

RECENT reporting of a huge radiation measurement at Unit 2 in the Fukushima Daichi reactor complex does not signify that there is a peak in radiation in the reactor building.

All that it indicates is that, for the first time, the Japanese have been able to measure the intense radiation given off by the molten fuel, as each previous attempt has led to failure because the radiation is so intense the robotic parts were functionally destroyed.

The radiation measurement was 530 sieverts, or 53,000 rems (Roentgen Equivalent for Man). The dose at which half an exposed population would die is 250 to 500 rems, so this is a massive measurement. It is quite likely had the robot been able to penetrate deeper into the inner cavern containing the molten corium, the measurement would have been much greater.

These facts illustrate why it will be almost impossible to “decommission” units 1, 2 and 3 as no human could ever be exposed to such extreme radiation. This fact means that Fukushima Daichi will remain a diabolical blot upon Japan and the world for the rest of time, sitting as it does on active earthquake zones.

Robot image of Fukushima Daiichi Unit 2 reactor (Source: tepco.co.jp)

What the photos taken by the robot did reveal was that some of the structural supports of Unit 2 have been damaged. It is also true that all four buildings were structurally damaged by the original earthquake some five years ago and by the subsequent hydrogen explosions so, should there be an earthquake greater than seven on the Richter scale, it is very possible that one or more of these structures could collapse, leading to a massive release of radiation as the building fell on the molten core beneath. But units 1, 2 and 3 also contain cooling pools with very radioactive fuel rods — numbering 392 in Unit 1, 615 in Unit 2, and 566 in Unit 3; if an earthquake were to breach a pool, the gamma rays would be so intense that the site would have to be permanently evacuated. The fuel from Unit 4 and its cooling pool has been removed.

But there is more to fear.

The reactor complex was built adjacent to a mountain range and millions of gallons of water emanate from the mountains daily beneath the reactor complex, causing some of the earth below the reactor buildings to partially liquefy. As the water flows beneath the damaged reactors, it immerses the three molten cores and becomes extremely radioactive as it continues its journey into the adjacent Pacific Ocean.

To continue reading: The Fukushima nuclear meltdown continues unabated

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Posted in Collapse, Environment, Government, Science, Technology

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Tax Reform & The “Japanification” Of America, by Lance Roberts

Posted on December 19, 2017 | Leave a comment

When an economy has too much debt, tax cuts don’t do much for it. From Lance Roberts at realinvestmentadvice.com:

On Friday, Kevin Brady of the House Ways and Means Committee was on my radio program discussing the “Tax Cuts & Jobs Act” bill which was released later in the day.

Here are the details of the release he referenced in the interview.

Of course, the real question is how are you going to “pay for it?”

Even as Kevin Brady noted in our interview, when I discussed the “fiscal” side of the tax reform bill, without achieving accelerated rates of economic growth – “the debt will balloon.”

The reality, of course, is that is exactly what will happen because there is absolutely NO historical evidence that cutting taxes, without offsetting cuts to spending, leads to stronger economic growth.

Those, of course, are the long-term concerns that will lead to lower rates of returns for equity-based investors and will continue to suppress interest rates for the next decade as the “Japanification” of the U.S. continues.

Let’s Be Like Japan

“Bad debt is the root of the crisis. Fiscal stimulus may help economies for a couple of years but once the ‘painkilling’ effect wears off, U.S. and European economies will plunge back into crisis. The crisis won’t be over until the nonperforming assets are off the balance sheets of US and European banks.” – Keiichiro Kobayashi, 2010

While Kobayashi will ultimately be right, what he never envisioned was the extent to which Central Banks globally would be willing to go. As my partner Michael Lebowitz pointed out last week:

“Global central banks’ post-financial crisis monetary policies have collectively been more aggressive than anything witnessed in modern financial history. Over the last ten years, the six largest central banks have printed unprecedented amounts of money to purchase approximately $14 trillion of financial assets as shown below. Before the financial crisis of 2008, the only central bank printing money of any consequence was the Peoples Bank of China (PBoC).”

To continue reading: Tax Reform & The “Japanification” Of America

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Bank of Japan Tapers (Quietly), QE Party Over, by Wolf Richter

Posted on December 5, 2017 | Leave a comment

The world’s major central banks are quietly withdrawing the monetary fuel for the rally in financial assets. That includes Japan’s. From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

No flashy announcement, to avoid alarming the markets.

After years of blistering asset purchases, the Bank of Japan disclosed today that it held a total of ¥521.6 trillion in assets as of November 30, including Japanese Government Bonds (JGBs), gold, corporate bonds, Japanese REITs, equity ETFs, loans, etc. That is quite a pile, so to speak. It amounts to about 96% of Japan’s GDP.

By this measure, the BOJ’s balance sheet dwarfs the Fed’s balance sheet, which amounts to 23% of US GDP. When it comes to QE, no one can hold a candle to Japan. Its holdings of JGBs alone rose to ¥443.6 trillion. Its balance sheet looks like a typical post-Financial-Crisis central-bank balance sheet on steroids (chart in trillion yen):

There a couple of differences compared to other central banks: One, the BOJ started QE long before anyone even called it “QE,” but in 2013, it really got going, and those giant moves made the prior periods of QE look minuscule. And two, the BOJ actually unwound some of its earlier QE starting in late 2005 but soon gave up on it.

Now something else has been happening: Starting in December 2016 – the month the Fed raised rates and a few months after some Fed governors started to kick around the idea publicly that QE should be unwound – the BOJ began to curtail its asset purchases.

In other words, it began to “taper.” Assets are still increasing but at a much slower rate. During peak QE – the 12-month period ending December 31, 2016 – it added ¥93.4 trillion (about $830 billion) to its balance sheet. Over the 12-month period ending November 30, 2017, it has added “only” ¥50.8 trillion to its balance sheet. Though that’s still a good chunk of money (about $450 billion), that addition is down 46%.

To continue reading: Bank of Japan Tapers (Quietly), QE Party Over

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Japan Just Killed the “Bitcoin Will Be Banned” Meme, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on October 30, 2017 | Leave a comment

Japan is holding itself out as a safe haven for cryptocurrencies. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

One of the most durable claims of cryptocurrency skeptics is that “governments will ban bitcoin once it threatens their fiat currency or their control.” Ben Bernanke recently gave voice to this claim as if it was received wisdom.

Sorry, crypto-skeptics: Japan just killed the “bitcoin will be banned” meme. Japan has established itself as the safe haven of all legit cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges.
Japan is not just the world’s third largest economy; it is a keystone of the global economy in supply chains, ownership of overseas assets, capital flows and technology. Japan’s embrace of cryptocurrencies suggests the Japanese understand that adoption of crypto and blockchain technology offers whatever nation is firstest with the mostest in legal protection of these technologies will have a powerful competitive advantage.
Many crypto skeptics claim the U.S. can browbeat adopters of bitcoin into banning cryptos via various threats such as limiting access to U.S. banking. Memo to skeptics: Japan is too strategically important for the U.S. to browbeat over something as small in scale as cryptos. Furthermore, Japan is long past the point where it will automatically comply with every self-destructive demand of the American Imperial project.
As I have often noted here, the market cap of the entire crypto market–$170 billion– is mere signal noise in the $500+ trillion market of global assets. Even if the crypto market rose 10-fold to $1.7 trillion, it would still be nothing but a tiny blip in the global asset marketplace.
Japan has the regulatory legal and bureaucratic structure to monitor and police crypto exchanges and transactions. This complex structure can be deployed to bog down whatever Japan doesn’t favor in endless red tape, or it can accommodate whatever Japan favors. Clearly, Japan favors the adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies.
The legalization of cryptocurrencies is now a done deal. Any nation foolish and self-destructive enough to attempt to outlaw cryptos will simply hasten the flow of capital to Japan and other safe-haven early adopters.
Clearly, the Japanese recognize the adoption of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies as a competitive advantage, and they’re right.

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The True Danger of the North Korea Crisis: It Could Cost America Its Allies, by Robert Kelly

Posted on October 16, 2017 | Leave a comment

Would the US wage a war that might kill millions of South Koreans or Japanese without consulting South Korea or Japan? It would be a colossal mistake, but the US government has made a lot of colossal foreign policy mistakes lately. From Robert Perry at strategic-culture.org:

If Washington takes action without consulting its allies, the alliances themselves could fray

Tough North Korea rhetoric from the U.S. administration continues. Major South Korean media increasingly talk as if U.S. air strikes are likely, and theexpert community seems increasingly resigned to them as well. Despite constant criticism of his incendiary language, President Donald Trump continues to suggest that major action against North Korea is imminent—most recently by suggesting that we are now in a period of ‘calm before the storm.’

I have argued in these pages that such strikes would be an enormous risk. We do not know what the North’s redlines for retaliation against such a strike are. We do not know if the strikes would so unnerve the North’s elites that war was next, that they would respond with enormous force, possibly including nuclear weapons. An expert study of this scenario suggests appalling casualty numbers. We also do not know what China’s thresholds are for intervention. China is treaty-bound to help North Korea if it is attacked. It may not, but if a U.S. air strike against North Korea spirals into a major conflict, then the likelihood of Chinese intervention rises.

It is also worth noting that even if the Chinese and North Koreans do not respond to air strikes, North Korea will almost certainly deploy human shields as soon as the bombs start to fall. And the North has so many targets that the United States would like to hit, that any ‘air strike’ would look a lot more like a major air campaign and not a quick ‘surgical strike,’ as in Syria earlier this year. An air campaign against sites with human shields means a high civilian death toll. The North Koreans will not make this easy for us at all.

White House officials, most importantly Secretary of Defense James Mattis, continue to suggest that diplomacy is the preferred outcome. And there are options to continue to buy us time against the North Korean nuclear and missile programs: missile defense, sanctions, continuing to cajole China to push North Korea harder and so on. Nevertheless, the pressure to something dramatic regarding North Korea is rising. If war is inevitable — it is not, but for the sake of the argument—it is better to fight now, before they have more weapons, and before those weapons can more evidently strike the continental United States. Even Kim Young-sam, South Korea’s president at the time of the 1994 nuclear crisis, has retrospectively regretted his decision not to strike then.

To continue reading: The True Danger of the North Korea Crisis: It Could Cost America Its Allies

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War Is Not an Option for Korea, by Christine Ahn

Posted on March 21, 2017 | Leave a comment

Even best case scenarios for war on the Korean Peninsula are horrific. From Christine Ahn at antiwar.com:

“Let me be very clear: The policy of strategic patience has ended,” U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters at a news conference in Seoul, South Korea. “All options are on the table,” Tillerson continued, including “an appropriate response” to any North Korean threat.

The United States and North Korea are like two “accelerating trains coming toward each other,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi warned last week. North Korea test-fired four ballistic missiles off the coast of Japan as thousands of South Korean, Japanese, and US troops, backed by warships and warplanes, are currently engaging in massive military exercises, including the deployment of the Navy SEALS that killed Osama Bin Laden.

With no communication other than military posturing, Pyongyang is left to interpret Washington’s maneuvers as preparation for a preemptive strike. Given the political vacuum in South Korea following President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment, all tracks are heading towards one destination: war.

At a Council of Foreign Relations discussion on March 13, Mary Beth Long, a former assistant secretary of defense, advocated for “aggressive movement” given the failure of the Obama administration’s strategic patience, which depended heavily on sanctions to further isolate and foment the collapse of the Kim Jong Un regime.

Yet as hawks call upon President Trump to deal with North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs through the use of force, they’re undermining the very reason the US military has allegedly been stationed on the Korean peninsula for seven decades: to protect the South Korean people.

Although the fantasy of surgical strikes to topple brutal dictators has long intoxicated American military officials, they’ve been restrained by the sobering reality of such reckless action. In the 1990s, when President Bill Clinton considered a first strike on North Korea’s Yongbyon nuclear reactor, the Pentagon concluded that even limited action would claim a million lives in the first 24 hours – and this was well before Pyongyang possessed nuclear weapons.

To continue reading: War Is Not an Option for Korea

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Markets Smell a Rat as Central Banks Dither, by Wolf Richter

Posted on February 3, 2017 | Leave a comment

There are a lot of good reasons not to allocate much money to bonds as an asset class right now. For one, as Wolf Richter points out, central banks are probably not going to be as strong a bid for them as they have been. From Richter at wolfstreet.com:

Markets are suspecting that central banks are in the process of exiting this fabulous multi-year party quietly, and that on the way out they won’t refill the booze and dope, leaving the besotted revelers to their own devices. That thought isn’t sitting very well with these revelers.

In markets where central banks have pushed government bond prices into the stratosphere and yields, even 10-year yields, below zero, there has been a sea change.

The 10-year yield of the Japanese Government Bond (JGB) jumped 2.5 basis points to 0.115% on Thursday, the highest since January 2016, after an auction for ¥2.4 trillion of 10-year JGBs flopped, as investors were losing interest in this paper at this yield, and as the Bank of Japan, rather than gobbling up every JGB in sight to help the auction along, sat on its hands and let it happen.

And on Friday morning, the 10-year yield jumped another 3 basis points to 0.145%!

In September last year, the BOJ started the now apparently troubled experiment of trying to control not just short-term interest rates but also the entire yield curve. It targeted a 10-year yield of about 0% (it was negative at the time). Analysts believed that this would mean a range between -0.1% and +0.1%, and that if the yield rose to +0.1%, the BOJ would throw its weight around and buy.

But the fact that the BOJ allowed the yield to go above that imaginary line signaled to the markets that it no longer has the intention of capping the yield at +0.1%, that in fact the BOJ has stepped back.

To continue reading; Markets Smell a Rat as Central Banks Dither

 

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