“I think maybe the situation is much more serious than we were led to believe,” said one expert, Najmedin Meshkati, of the University of Southern California, adding it may take weeks to stabilize the situation and the United Nations should step in.

“This is far beyond what one nation can handle – it needs to be bumped up to the U.N. Security Council. In my humble opinion, this is more important than the Libya no fly zone.”

Under-pressure plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. has conceded it faces a protracted and uncertain operation to contain overheating fuel rods and avert a meltdown.

“Regrettably, we don’t have a concrete schedule at the moment to enable us to say in how many months or years (the crisis will be over),” TEPCO vice-president Sakae Muto said in the latest of round-the-clock briefings the company holds.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/27/us-japan-quake-idUSTRE72A0SS20110327

“One problem for a more open Fed is that it cannot be entirely frank about what just happened. The truth is, it bent the rules. Another is that it runs the risk of being drawn further into US politics, a hazardous place for it to be.

If Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling before the end of April, Mr Bernanke will doubtless emphasise at that first news conference the risks to the economy of leaving the issue unresolved or, worse, of allowing the ceiling to be reached. He has said as much already, but now it will be with a higher profile. Of course, he will be right. But he will be directly contradicting the Republican congressmen who argue that the ceiling should not be raised, and that allowing it to be hit would be a salutary experience.” (FT.com)

Hela artikeln, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/8a1429d8-58a2-11e0-9b8a-00144feab49a.html#axzz1HqBNgYYo

Egyptens Hermes index stiger med 5.1% under helgen. Låt oss se om det handlar om en dead cat bounce, eller har vi sett botten?

“Well, happy days are here again. The billions Japan plans to spend rebuilding is just the beginning. Disaster-damage estimates always start on the conservative side. And given how Japan’s Goodfellas are being squeezed from all angles, expect an all-guns-blazing effort to boost their 3 percent take.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-25/yakuza-salivating-over-new-construction-boom-commentary-by-william-pesek.html

Vad skönt att allt är som vanligt. TEPCOs mätning var fel. Vad håller de på med? Däremot undrar vi om allt är lugnt nu när  TEPCO rapporterar ENDAST 100 000 gånger högre strålning, än de 10 miljoner gånger högre tidigare rapporterat? Några nollor kan väl inte vara så farligt.

“Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) vice-president Sakae Muto apologized for Sunday’s error, which added to alarm inside and outside Japan over the impact of contamination from the complex which was hit by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Radiation in the water was a still worrying 100,000 times higher than normal, rather than 10 million times higher as originally stated, Muto said.

“I am very sorry…I would like to make sure that such a mistake will not happen again.”

På temat TEPCO, Japans regering och hur ett kärnkraftverk sköts.

“The Japanese system underestimated the natural threat from the earthquake and tsunami,” said Pierre Zaleski of University Paris Dauphine and a former French Atomic Energy Commission member. “They really haven’t taken these threats seriously enough, and they haven’t moved fast enough.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-25/tsunami-risk-well-known-to-nuclear-engineers-regulators-who-failed-to-act.html

Icke/mörkade informationen kring Fukushima fortsätter. Idag söndag rapporteras det om kraftigt ökad strålning i havet utanför Fukushima. Japans regering får negativ kritik, och de stoiska invånarna verkar alltmer trötta på de motsägelsefulla rapporterna som trumpetas ut. TEPCO bör förstatligas inom kort. Nedan från Kyodo;

“Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the concentration of radioactive substances of the puddle was 10 million times higher than that seen usually in water in a reactor core, but later decided to reanalyze the data because it found some errors.”

“Exposure to such an environment for four hours would raise the risk of dying in 30 days.”

http://english.kyodonews.jp/news/2011/03/81345.html

Nedan graf över arbetslösheten nu (röd) mot max arbetslösheten (blå) vid recessionens botten. Tydligt är att “bil” staterna har minskat arbetslösheten mest, medan flertalet stater kämpar med fortstt höga siffror (inget blått). Ska det bli någon fart i ekonomin krävs mer blått.

När VD jobbet innebär mer än att spela golf med “kunder”, gå på gym med PT och äta lunch på Genyadana Hamadaya. När det blåser snålt är ledningen upptagna med att hitta någon att skylla på. Samma gäller ledningar världen över, men i Japan gråter de i alla fall ut offentligt.

“Masataka Shimizu, president of Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the crisis-hit Fukushima nuclear plant, fell sick March 16 and took some days off from the liaison office between the government and the utility firm, TEPCO officials said Sunday. While Shimizu was away from the office set up at the firm’s headquarters, he collected information and issued instructions from a different room of the headquarters building to address the troubles at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station hit by the March 11 quake and subsequent tsunami, the officials said. He has already recovered and come back to work at the liaison office, they said. A TEPCO spokesperson declined to elaborate on his health condition, but said he did not fall over or need to be hooked up to an intravenous drip. Shimizu has not appeared in public since attending a press conference on March 13, two days after the catastrophe that wreaked havoc on northeastern and eastern Japan.” (Kyodo)