Quake knocks Japan into recession. From Reuters, May 19.
Related articles
- Japan’s economy falls into recession following quake (edition.cnn.com)
- Why Japan’s earthquake caused a recession (curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com)
- Japan Slides Into Recession – Wall Street Journal (news.google.com)
Okay perhaps completely wrong. Japan passed recently by China as world’s second largest economy. Perhaps idle speculation but wondering where Japan, now No. 3 in world economies, will rank at the end of this decade. My guess is out of top five, and perhaps out of top 10! Why? Costs of recovery from March 11th event are humongous–I have been estimating over $1 trillion–while GOI says $150B but they spent IMO over $250B on KOBE alone (this is disputed by all but my Japanese contacts)! And now at least 25% of their nuclear power generation capacity will have to be replaced by other energy sources. And perhaps 50% if you include the 14 cancelled nuclear power plants already announced.
By the way now revealed TEPCO knew it had a core melt event in Reactor #1 at Fukishima by March 12th. No disclosure of that fact to GOI!