¿Qué ocurre en el Mundo?

De Bruno Seminario

Por nuestro amigo Oscar Blanco pudimos conocer el año pasado el Cisne Negro y si lo menciono ahora es porque el argumento general de esta obra me parece pernitenentes para entender la actual coyuntura mundial.   Para entender el desarrollo del proceso tenemos que volver al III y IV trimestre del año pasado, pues fue en esa fecha donde emergió el primer evento extraordinario : se perdió la cosecha de trigo de Rusia, Argentina , Australia, y el clima hizo disminuir la producción agrícola en Estados Unidos. Todo ello empujo hacia arriba el precio de los alimentos.  ¿Que provocó el fenómeno,? Todo parece indicar que el responsable fue lel extraño del comportamiento del sol y el irregular comportamiento de las manchas solares. La última vez que ocurrio este evento fue al finalizar el siglo XVIII , cuando se registró en el mundo una alteración climática similar. Jevons, uno de los fundadores de la economía neoclasico, propueso años más tarde una teoría estelar de lñas fluctuaciones económicas que liga el comportamiento de las estrellas con el cielo con el comportamiento de los negocios.  Como la idea le pareció demasiado extraña a los  ingleses , un pueblo bastante sensato, la idea fue olvidado , pero pcontó con bastante simpatizantes en Estados Unidos. La economía estelar, en relidad,  es el antecedente más antiguo de los esquemas para seguir la coyuntura., pero  abandono el tema para no irme por las ramas.  En cualquier caso,  miositró con claridadd de que el comportamiento del sol  y de sus manchas no era tan regualr como se pensaba. A intervalos poco frecuentes, las mancghas y la radiacion solar puede mostrar un comportamiento aberrante. Mencio el tema porque las alteraciones climaticas con que se inció el ño pueden tener un c+aratcer mas permante que lo anticipado y porque es el primer vento poco frecuente. El segundo es la  revolución en el oriente Medio que ha determinado hasta ahora la caida del gobiernoo de Tunez  y Egipto9, la guerra civil en LiLibia, problemas en el Yemne, la invasión de Arabia Saudita ade Bahrain, y que hintrodujo presiones en el precio del petróleo. Otro evnto poco frecuente: las dictaduras rabaes son suelen bastante longevas y es probable que la revoucion produzca efun fectos que puede prolongarse por varios años. Resulta, sin embargo, interesante notar que lque puede existir cierta correlacion entre estos ventos, un hecho importante porque  la  vanrianza de sus  fecto combinados es mayor que la de sus fecto individual. Pero  el aumento el precio del pteróleo tambien puso en accion dos procesos:  ahora se dedica una parta de la produccion agricola del mundo para producir energía; tambien promovio la  insesata idea de que rea pposible cubrir con energia nuclear la escacez de combustibles. En realidad, loEstados Unidso, Europa, China y Japón, pensaban expandir sula producción dde energia nuclear para cubrir sus necesidades de nergia. Optimistas planes que elevaron la rentabilidad de lso gigantes que producen energía en lso paises del priemr mundo, pero que quedo totaaklmente desacretida por el terrmoto de Jpón, un vento poco frecuente  , y, que puede ser el denonante de varios procesos  y de una revisón sustancial del diseño básico del mundo global. ¡Como entender los fectos del terremto? Debemos notarm, que hay una difrencia sustancial entre un terremoto y un huracán, y, que tambien que el espacio donde ocurre el desatre nuclaer tiene cierta importancia para entender su efecto. Tambien los efectos efectos que provoca porque ellos dterminan no sólo la magnituda de la fase de reconstruccion sino que tambnien su prpro¿prpia viabilidad. Paar entender el efecto del terremoto9 tenemos que empezar distingueinedo palzos  porque sus pueden ser diferentes en el corto, mediano y largo plazo. En el corto plazo, la producción de Japón puede experimentar un descenso importante, sepor la escases de nergia, la destrustrucción de los puertos, y la contaminación radioactiva. El gren problema es que esta reduccion en la producción no ssólo afetcra a Japón. La economía Japonesea desempeñaun papel crucial en varias cadenas internacionales de producción. Japón produce sólo en Japon  partes para autos, memorias para coputadoras, chips que se meplean en telefonos inteligenmtes, apartos de televisón, etc. Todas estas industrias pueden experimentar problemas en el corto plazo. ¿Cuando puede durar el corto plazo ? Si somos optimistas unos quinece meses, es decir, un tiempo sufientemente largo para cerar problemas en toda la cadena mundial de producción. En realidad, el jemplo dmeustro algo mas fundamental: que las cadenas logisticas que se desarrolalron en los años 90s, y que son la expresión m{as caratceirsticas del proceso de  globalizacion, no colpasan cuando ocurre un vento poco comun. Tambien que el valor de todas las empresas que crecieron gracias ellas esta mal calculado pues enfrenta riesgos mayores que lo que parece a primewra vsiat.  Cua ndo el mercado corrija su apreciacion del riego es probable que se rviesen la ciotizacion de la misma, un proceso que limiara la ineversión en ella. Derspues de todo no son tan rentables como se anticpaban. Estas empresas s, oinan algunaos, son bastante similaesa las hipotetcas basuras, quees decuir, nno pueden aguantar una presion estyrema . Pero este no es el únco efecto, Japel lugar donde ha ocurre el shock tiene importancia, porque Japón  tanmbien desmpeña aun papel crucial en la oferta de fiondos mundiales.  Pose casi un trillon dde ineversiones en estados Unidos, un cifra que experimentara una reduccion cuando el gobierno y las compañias de seguro, retiren el dinero para cubrir sus obligaciones en Japón. Proporciiona fiondos indirde forma indirecta,   mediante inversión extranajera a las economais asiaticas mas pequenas y a los especualdores que llevan su planta a Londres y de ahi a Nueva York.  CEl reacomodo que experimenta todo este circuito puede provocar una conmosión similar a la que experimentamos cuando ocurrio la crisisis asiatica. 

Lo dejo ahi

No he considerado para nada el probefecto de la contaminación nuclear y  del gfterremoto que puede ocurrir en California. 

Has The Tsunami In Japan Destroyed The Japanese Economy?

Has The Tsunami In Japan Destroyed The Japanese Economy?
The Economic Collapse ^ | 03/12/2011 | Michael Snyder

Posted on sáb 12 mar 2011 15:07:47 

The entire world is in a state of mourning today as details regarding the horrific damage caused by the massive tsunami in Japan continue to trickle in. The magnitude 8.9 earthquake that caused the tsunami was the largest earthquake that Japan has ever experienced in modern times. Waves as high as 30 feet swept over northern Japan. The tsunami waters reached as far as 6 miles inland, and authorities have already recovered hundreds of dead bodies. Those of us that have seen footage of this disaster on television will never forget it. But this nightmare is not over yet. There have been dozens of aftershocks, and many of them have been quite large. In fact, there have been 19 earthquakes of at least magnitude 6.0 in the area over the last 24 hours. So what is this disaster going to do to the 3rd largest economy in the world? Japan already had a national debt that was well over 200 percent of GDP. Could this be the "tipping point" that pushes the Japanese economy over the edge and into oblivion?
It is hard to assess the full scope of the damage to Japan at this point, but virtually everyone agrees that much of northern Japan is a complete and total disaster area at this point. Many towns have essentially been destroyed. Some are estimating that the economic damage from this disaster will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Others believe that the final total will be in the trillions of dollars.
Fortunately, major cities such as Tokyo came through this event relatively unscathed and most of the major manufacturing facilities are not in the areas that were most directly affected by the earthquake and the tsunami.
But let there be no doubt, this was a nation-changing event. Japan will never quite be the same again.
Also, it isn't just Japan that will be affected by this. The truth is that economic ripples from this event will be felt all over the world.
An economist from High Frequency Economics, Carl Weinberg, told AFP the following about the economic consequences of this disaster....

"There is no way to assess even the direct damage to Japan's economy or to the global economy. This is a sad day for Japan, and economic aftershocks could affect the whole world's economy."

It is literally going to take months to figure out exactly how much damage has been done. Let us just hope that we don't see any more major earthquakes in the area.
The Japanese are a very resilient people and the Bank of Japan is already vowing that it will be doing whatever is necessary to ensure the stability of the financial markets. The Bank of Japan has announced that it is going to provide as much liquidity as necessary to keep the Japanese economy functioning normally.
But the truth is that the Bank of Japan has already been printing money like crazy....

Is a tsunami of new yen really going to solve the economic damage that has been done by the earthquake and the tsunami?
Of course not.
The truth is that the economy of Japan was already deeply struggling before this disaster.
The national debt of Japan is now well over 200% of GDP and there seems to be no doubt that they will need to borrow massive amounts of money to deal with the aftermath of this crisis.
Up until now the Japanese government has been able to borrow money at ultra-low interest rates of around 1.30 percent for 10-year bonds, drawing on a huge pool of savings from its own citizens.
But in light of what has just happened, will the citizens of Japan still have enough resources to continue to fund the rampant spending of the Japanese government?
At this point, it is estimated that this gigantic mountain of debt breaks down to 7.5 million yen for every single citizen of Japan.
Politicians in Japan have been pledging for years to do something about all of this debt, but nobody has been able to make much progress.
Even before this disaster, the major credit rating agencies were warning that they may have to downgrade Japanese government debt. The earthquake and the tsunami are certainly not going to make the Japanese even more credit-worthy.
Hideo Kumano, the chief economist at Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, has said that a "tipping point" will come when world financial markets finally recognize that the government of Japan simply cannot afford to service its debt any longer....

"It's hard to predict when the bond market might collapse, but it would happen when the market judges that Japan's ability to finance its debt is not sustainable anymore."

Is the massive tsunami that just hit Japan such a tipping point?
Other countries such as Greece and Ireland would have already collapsed if it had not been for the massive international bailouts that they received.
So who is going to bail Japan out?
This could potentially be one of the greatest economic disasters that the world has seen since World War 2.
With the world already on the verge of a major financial collapse, this is the last thing that world financial markets needed.
In fact, much of the rest of the world had been hoping that an influx of capital from Japan would help to stabilize things.
For example, Japanese insurance companies had recently announced that they were planning on buying up lots of European sovereign debt, but now obviously those plans are on hold. As a result of this disaster, Japanese insurance companies will be forced to sell off assets like crazy in order to pay settlements. But as Zero Hedge is correctly pointing out, without Japanese financial institutions stepping in to soak up Eurozone bonds this is going to make the European sovereign debt crisis even worse.
But right now the focus in on the devastation in Japan. At the moment it is unclear how much of the economic infrastructure of Japan has survived.
For example, as USA Today is reporting, some factories cannot even be reached by phone at this point....

Toyota's phone calls to its plants in affected areas were not being answered, said Shiori Hashimoto, a spokeswoman in Tokyo. The Toyota City-based carmaker began production at a new plant in Miyagi this year that makes Yaris compact cars and has capacity to make 120,000 vehicles a year.

What is clear is that the cost of recovering and rebuilding after this disaster is going to put extraordinary financial stress on the Japanese government.
Julian Jessop of Capital Economics certainly does not sound optimistic about what this is going to mean for the Japanese economy....

"Japan's economic recovery has lost momentum and a large part of the reconstruction costs will add to the government's significant debt burden."

Hopefully the full extent of the damage is not as bad as many are now fearing.
But the truth is that this is a huge, huge event for a world economy that was already on the verge of collapse.
May our thoughts and our prayers be with the Japanese people at this time.
This is truly one of the biggest disasters that any of us have ever seen, and Japan will never be the same again.

.

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Scientific American: Chernobyl ahora

Contaminantes radioactivos vida "útil" en la atmósfera:
Iodine-131 decae rapidamente en unos 3 meses
cesio-137 y estroncio 90, ambos tienen aproximadamente 30 años de vida media,
plutonio-239, uno de los principales isótopos en los reactores nucleares, tiene una media la vida de más de 24.000 años.

The worst nuclear plant accident in history: Live from Chernobyl

By Charles Choi | Mar 15, 2011 08:00 AM | 3
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine—The face mask and three radiation monitors I'm wearing here are grim reminders that I'm at the site of the worst nuclear accident in history. On April 26, 1986, 1:23:44 A.M. local time, explosions destroyed reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, releasing approximately 400 times more radioactive fallout than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Now, almost 25 years after the disaster, the Ukrainian government has officially opened the area up for tourism. But just how safe is the zone now?

Radiation
After the explosions, it was unclear how contaminated the surroundings were, so the authorities declared an arbitrary 30-kilometer distance from the reactor off-limits, and roughly 115,000 people were evacuated from the area. This "exclusion zone" is now open to tourism.

I drove to Chernobyl with health physicist Vadim Chumak at the Research Center for Radiation Medicine at the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine and his colleagues. A car shuttles there every week to collect stool samples from workers to test for any plutonium they might have accidentally absorbed. (Science, like journalism, can be a dirty job, but someone has to do it.)

The world is normally bathed in a low level of radiation. In Kiev, where I started my trip, one normally receives 0.1 millionths of a sievert every hour. This is pretty much the level of radiation we saw on the road on the roughly two-hour, 150-kilometer drive into the exclusion zone, but readings on our dosimeter temporarily climb up to 4.76 millionths of a sievert per hour when our car passes through the old path of the radioactive plume from the destroyed reactor.

How safe this area is now after the accident depends on what radioactive material was released and where it went. There are four kinds of radionuclides or radioactive isotopes that are of special concern at the site. Iodine-131 is rapidly absorbed by the thyroid gland and increases the risk of childhood thyroid cancer. Cesium-137 mimics potassium inside the body, seeking out muscle. Strontium-90 acts like calcium, attracted to bone. Plutonium-239 and other isotopes can stay in the body indefinitely, irradiating organs.

These four materials escaped from the explosions to varying distances, given factors such as their mass and melting points. Iodine-131 and cesium-137 were both very broadly transported hundreds of kilometers, while strontium-90 remained in dust just 30 kilometers from the power plant and plutonium traveled only four kilometers or so.
Iodine-131 decays rapidly, and was virtually gone from the environment after only three months, Chumak says. However, cesium-137 and strontium-90 both have approximately 30-year half-lives, meaning they each take roughly three decades for half their material to decay, and plutonium-239, one the main isotopes in nuclear reactors, has a half-life of more than 24,000 years.

Chernobyl: Timeline of a Tragedy on Dipity.

After the disaster, both emergency workers dubbed "liquidators" and natural forces helped to reduce airborne levels of radiation. The liquidators sprayed detergents and latex-like binding solutions from helicopters and automobiles to bind contaminants. The roads were paved to cover radioactive dust, while ploughs flipped soil over to bury polluted soil. Meanwhile, rain helped contaminants migrate down into the ground.

The exclusion zone was possibly safe for tourism "about five years after the accident," Chumak says. Still, just because one can tour the area does not mean everywhere here is safe to tread. There are hot spots that remain highly contaminated, especially in the path of the radioactive plume. Where tourists are allowed to go and how long they will be allowed to stay will be strictly controlled to keep their risks of exposure down.

And there are some places here that remain too dangerous for tourists to go, such as the sarcophagus.

Inside the sarcophagus
Soon after firefighters extinguished the blazes from the explosions at Chernobyl, workers quickly built a structure of steel and concrete technically known as the Shelter Object but commonly known as the sarcophagus to entomb the remains of the damaged reactor and keep any more contaminants from escaping. It remains one of the most radioactive areas in the zone.

Nowadays, workers here maintain the corroding sarcophagus, monitor the radioactive material inside, and decontaminate what they can. To enter the structure with them, I strip down to only my underwear in a "clean room" and walk in a hospital gown and slippers into a "hot room," where I put on the pure white outfit given to everyone on site—scrubs, a jacket, trousers, a scrub cap, socks, gloves and a mask with the highest-grade filter available for dust. On top of that I don an overcoat, a hardhat and crusty boots. In addition, I am carrying the radiation badge I had when I entered the 30-kilometer exclusion zone, a second radiation badge I was given when I entered the area of the plant, and a personal electronic dosimeter to tell me exactly how much radiation I am receiving.

(The workers don't normally wear lead shielding, and neither do I. Although lead can protect against radiation, it slows you down, thus increasing the dose you ultimately receive.)

The maximum dose of radiation that workers here are generally allowed on a daily shift is 0.1 thousandths of a sievert, the level of radiation one gets from a 90-minute transatlantic flight or from four hours watching a plasma screen television, says Vladimir Malyshev, chief safety officer at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. When I am standing right in front of the sarcophagus, the readings leap up to 0.12 thousandths of a sievert per hour, or 1,200 times that seen in Kiev.

After passing an electronic checkpoint—one of a half-dozen or so that I stopped at—I find myself in the dark, gutted remains of the control room for reactor No. 4. Here engineers made the fateful errors that poisoned the Earth.

After returning from the sarcophagus, I leave everything I wore outside in a locker in the hot zone and take a mandatory shower to wash away any potential contamination. I don't think I've ever wanted to be clean more in my life.

Life and wildlife
Although Chernobyl might be safe for a day of tourism, living there is another question. The Ukrainian government did allow people who originally lived in the exclusion zone to resettle on an individual basis. For instance, some areas within 30 kilometers of the explosions are relatively clean, and the elderly would probably not absorb unhealthy levels of radiation in what time they had left, Chumak says.

However, some places remain too dangerous for resettlement. "People might be allowed to live in the 30-kilometer zone, but I don't expect anyone to live within the 10-kilometer zone, ever," Chumak says. "There's some plutonium there."

Officials there did say I should look out for wildlife in the zone. "A mad wolf attacked six people here recently," Malyshev says.

The disaster's impact on wildlife in the zone remains hotly contested. For instance, radiation biologist Ron Chesser at Texas Tech University in Lubbock and his colleagues suggest the area is thriving with life now that humans have left, finding that the wild boar population there has grown 10 to 15 times than what it was before the accident, and that other fauna are often seen in the area, such as wolves, rabbits, red deer, black storks and moose. Their genetic work suggests that any effects of radiation are subtle enough to not lead to any mutations passed down across generations, with the animals perhaps acclimatizing to any damage by boosting their genetic repair mechanisms. As bad as the radiation is, the effects of humans on the environment might have been worse, Chesser concludes.

On the other hand, biologist Tim Mousseau at the University of South Carolina at Columbia and his colleagues have found that species richness of forest birds was reduced by more than half when comparing sites with normal background levels of radiation to sites with the highest levels in the exclusion zone, and the numbers of bumblebees, grasshoppers, butter ies, dragonflies and spiders decreased too. Analysis of more than 7,700 barn swallows in Chernobyl and other areas in Ukraine and Europe suggested ones from in or near the exclusion zone had higher levels of abnormalities such as deformed toes, beaks and eyes or aberrant coloration, and recent work also suggests that birds living in areas with high levels of radiation around Chernobyl have smaller brains.

Both teams stand by their own work and suggest the other made errors related to geographic variability.

Tourist attraction?
So what can tourists see at Chernobyl? One can often see and feed giant catfish in the 22-square-kilometer nuclear power plant cooling pond, although during cold weather, the pond is frozen over and covered in snow. In the distance, one can also see a giant radar grid roughly 150 meters high—taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza's current height—once meant to track any nuclear missiles launched from the United States. "It needed a lot of power, which is why it was near Chernobyl," Chumak explains.

The city of Pripyat, abandoned after the accident, is frozen in time, with the Communist hammer and sickle still adorning streetlights here. Nature is reclaiming the area, with white birch and green pines hiding many of the blocky Soviet buildings and animal tracks fresh on the snow still covering the ground here in the first week of March.

By a dock near a riverside cafe in Pripyat, the scientists I traveled with started gathering pussy willows, completely unbidden. These flowers bloom under the snow, and the men want to bring them back for International Women's Day on March 8. "These mean spring," says physicist Vitalii Volosky at the Research Center for Radiation Medicine in Kiev.

Despite the official announcement, tourism to Chernobyl is nothing new—trips have been going there for about a decade. The recent publicity regarding tourism may have its roots in the economic impact of Chernobyl—even two decades after the disaster, roughly 6 percent of the national budgets of both Ukraine and Belarus were still devoted to Chernobyl-related benefits and programs, according to a 2005 report from the Chernobyl Forum, comprised of eight United Nations agencies and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. "There is this motivation there to do what can be done to return some of this land to productive use," Mousseau says.

Among those who lived through the disaster, the idea of tourism to Chernobyl brings up strong emotions, just as it might for New Yorkers dealing with 9/11. "If we are wise, we will make Chernobyl a museum for humankind just like Hiroshima and Nagasaki," Chumak says.

Among the younger generation in Kiev, there is real interest in visiting. "My son really wants to go, as do a couple of young students here," Chumak says.

Still, for others, tourism to Chernobyl holds no attraction. "Personally, every trip I make there is not a positive one," says physicist Elena Bakhanova at the Research Center for Radiation Medicine in Kiev. "It was a human error, a sign of human foolishness."
Images: Charles Q. Choi in the control room for destroyed reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant; Health physicist Vadim Chumak at the Research Center for Radiation Medicine at the Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev. He is wearing a respirator mask with the highest-grade filter available against aerosols, to protect against airborne contamination; The entrance to a "hot room" at the facility where workers at Chernobyl change their clothing. In the "clean room," I took off all my clothing except my underwear. In the hot room, I was given clothing to wear in the sarcophagus; Visitor's badge and radiation badge. The visitor's badge has a microchip scannable at electronic checkpoints. The radiation badge is a dosimeter that measures my exposure to radiation—the silver disk on the badge measures the radiation my skin received, while the black bump measured the levels deeper tissues experienced; This giant radar grid relatively close to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was once meant to track any nuclear missiles launched from the United States. It is roughly 150 meters high, taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza's current height. Credit for all images: Charles Q. Choi.
About the Author: Charles Q. Choi (@cqchoi) is a frequent contributor to Scientific American. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, Science, Nature and Wired, among others. In his spare time, he has traveled to all seven continents. This post is the first in a series of stories from Chernobyl that Choi has written for Scientific American.
The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American.


http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=the-worst-nuclear-plant-accident-in-2011-03-14

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Alemania y Suiza se replantean su futuro nuclear debido al tsunami de Japón La c

Alemania y Suiza se replantean su futuro nuclear debido al tsunami de Japón

La confederación helvética suspende los procedimientos para autorizar nuevas centrales y Alemania podría no prolongar su vida

ABC

Día 14/03/2011 - 14.20h

COMENTARIOS

EFE

Mapa de las nucleares niponas

Suiza ha suspendido todos los procedimientos en curso para autorizar nuevas centrales nucleares mientras se examina la seguridad de las ya existentes en el país, según anunció hoy la ministra de Energía, Doris Leuthard. La medida fue adoptada en respuesta a la grave alarma nuclear creada en Japón tras el terremoto del pasado 11 de marzo y el accidente en la central de Fukushima. El Ministerio de Energía señaló que Leuthard ha ordenado «volver a examinar la seguridad de las centrales existentes», informa Efe.

La Inspección federal de la Seguridad Nuclear analizará las causas exactas del accidente nuclear en Japón, y de ahí podría decidirse la revisión de las normas actualmente en vigor en Suiza, señaló el Ministerio.

También en Alemania

La decisión del Gobierno alemán de ampliar la vida de las centrales nucleares del país podría quedar suspendida, según ha afirmado este lunes el ministro de Asuntos Exteriores, Guido Westerwelle, después de la crisis nuclear que se ha producido en Japón a raíz de los daños provocados por el terremoto y el posterior tsunami del viernes pasado, informa Reuters.

La canciller alemana, Angela Merkel, ha sido criticada por la decisión del Ejecutivo de prorrogar la vida de las viejas plantas atómicas alemanas, una medida sumamente impopular entre los ciudadanos. Westerwelle, que lidera el Partido Democrático Liberal, miembro de la coalición gobernante, ha respondido a una pregunta de un periodista sobre si esa decisión que se tomó el año pasado podría quedar suspendida temporalmente diciendo "Me imagino que sí".

El tsunami japonés ha puesto en duda la seguridad de las centrales nucleares

Previamente, el comisario europeo de Energía, Guenther Oettinger, había dicho que se debe comprobar rigurosamente la seguridad en las centrales más antiguas y no descartó cerrar algunas en caso de que fuese necesario. El ministro de Medio Ambiente, Norbert Roettgen, ha pedido una nueva evaluación de riesgos en las plantas nucleares y ha señalado que su partido y el de Merkel, la Unión Cristiano Demócrata (CDU), deberían reabrir el debate sobre la energía atómica. Oettinger fue primer ministro del estado suroccidental de Baden-Wuerttemberg, donde la CDU podría perder el poder en las elecciones que se celebrarán dentro de dos semanas, en parte debido a que los Verdes, que se oponen a la energía nuclear, tienen cada vez más apoyo entre el electorado.

Consecuencias políticas y econ{omicas de la crisis nuclear

03/14/2011 01:52 PM

The World From Berlin
Nuclear Disaster 'Will Have Political Impact as Great as 9/11'

The nuclear disaster in Fukushima makes it hard to ignore the vulnurabilities of the technology. It could spell the end of nuclear power, German commentators argue on Monday. The government in Berlin may now cave in to mounting pressure to suspend its 12-year extension of reactor lifetimes, they say.

The nuclear accident at Japan's Fukushima plant following Friday's earthquake and tsunami has led to anxious questions in Germany about the safety of its own nuclear reactors and is putting the government under intense pressure to rethink its decision to extend plant lifetimes by an average of 12 years.

German media commentators across the political spectrum are saying the accident in a highly developed nation such as Japan is further evidence that nuclear power isn't safe. One commentator in the conservative Die Welt went as far as to liken the global impact of the Fukushima explosions to that of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition of conservatives and the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) reversed the planned phaseout of the 17 nuclear reactors by 2021, amending a decision taken by a previous center-left government in 2002 to end nuclear power generation in Germany.

She argued that nuclear power was needed as "bridge technology" to ensure the supply of affordable power as Germany converts to renewable energy generation. She plans to increase the share of renewable generation to 80 percent by 2050, from a current level of only 16 percent.

A majority of Germans are opposed to nuclear power and the Fukushima accident is becoming a campaign issue ahead of state elections, the most important of which is being held in the conservative-ruled and wealthy state of Baden-Württemberg on March 27. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has held the state since 1953, and a defeat would be a major psychological blow to the chancellor and her party.

It would also make it harder for her to pass legislation because the opposition parties would gain power in the country's upper legislative chamber, the Bundesrat, which represents the interests of the states and has the right of co-determination on many important laws.

On Monday, support in Merkel's coalition for extending nuclear lifetimes started to crumble. Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, the leader of the FDP, called for a safety review at all German nuclear plants. Power stations whose cooling systems were found to lack multiple safety levels would have to be switched off "until the situation is totally clear."

Other members of the coalition have also been calling for a rethink.

German media commentators say Fukushima may force Merkel to shut German reactors down sooner.

Center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"The events in Japan, which geographically couldn't be much further from Germany, will influence politics in this country. They could soon start changing majorities and make governing even harder for the center-right coalition. The decision it made on nuclear power in September 2010 could be its undoing."

"There are few issues that can fire up people's emotions and mobilize them politically as much as nuclear power can. That's not good news for a government that supports nuclear power. Especially ahead of important regional elections, which won't affect the balance of power in national politics but which could well influence the morale of party workers to preserve that power."

"It's not good news because in the end, for example in Baden-Württemberg, it will only take a few percentage points more or less to determine the election outcome. Doubts among the supporters of the conservatives or the FDP could keep a few thousand voters from the ballot boxes -- or drive them into the arms of the center-left parties."

"For Merkel, it is hard to imagine a greater accident at present than the loss of a CDU governor in Baden-Württemberg."

"The safety precautions (at the Japanese nuclear plant) weren't just insufficient; the operating company TEPCO systematically breached them, as the government ascertained in 2002. TEPCO falsified security reports in more than 200 cases."

"Japan is a democracy, but so far the control of the government by the voters has hardly worked. Things only got a little better after the Democratic Party came to power two years ago. Before that, the often incompetent and corrupt governments were never voted out of office. The perestroika that Japan so urgently needs has scarcely begun."

"The unpopular government of Prime Minister Naoto Kan has been on the brink of collapse in recent weeks. It seemed paralyzed, distracted, disoriented and divided. Now it has to lead the country through what may be its worst disaster since 1945. Can it? In the Soviet Union the Chernobyl disaster accelerated the downfall of a broken, paralyzed political system."

Left-wing Die Tageszeitung writes:

"It was always said that danger only came from rickety old reactors in former Eastern Bloc states -- while conveniently ignoring that Sweden, France or the United States kept on narrowly avoiding maximum credible accidents. The disaster of Fukushima has made clear: There are situations in which even triple safety systems fail."

"The weak argument offered by the nuclear lobby that Germany isn't prone to heavy earthquakes and tsunamis doesn't apply. If a chain of serious events and stupid coincidences cause prolonged power outages, if the access routes are blocked or if the control room is destroyed by a plane crash, German reactors too will overheat. "

Conservative Die Welt writes:

"The earthquake of March 11 was no terrorist attack. But its political and psychological consequences will be as great as 9/11 because it has shown what a terrorist attack on nuclear plants would look like."

"The photos of burning buildings being swept away are disturbing enough, but nuclear power makes the decisive difference. The shockwave that went out from Fukushima may have only reached three kilometers in physical terms. But in mental terms it went around the whole world."

"Chernobyl was a special case. Nuclear energy was viewed with suspicion but it was accepted as long as modern democracies harnessed it with security precautions."

"That is over now. Faith in redundant, coincidence-proof security precautions has been wiped out by Fukushima. The high-tech democracy Japan has shown what could happen if an Internet attack on German or French nuclear reactors were to happen as it did with the 'Stuxnet' program against the Iranian nuclear program. Or if a determined, technologically skilled terrorist group were to seize control of a power station. One knew it before. Seeing it has made the difference."

Conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"It seems inappropriate to criticize the information policy of the Japanese government. Some of its statements may seem a bit overly reticent, but one should allow a government the right not to descend into speculation about all the theoretically possible scenarios. People are already being inundated by enough of such speculation."

"Japan has always been at the forefront of disaster relief efforts in other parts of the world. That is why the country now has at least a moral claim to assistance from its friends. People abroad may find it irritating that the country will probably have to keep on using nuclear power in the future. But this isn't the time for know-it-all advice. One should imagine what would have happened if a reactor in a country with less rigid safety standards had been subjected to such an earthquake."

The mass-circulation Bild tabloid writes:

"The nuclear accident is giving even firm supporters of nuclear power cause for thought, because the unthinkable happened in Fukushima. But even if we wanted to, we couldn't switch off all nuclear reactors overnight. Because the lights would literally go out. The maximum credible accident of Fukushima forces us to check the safety standards of our nuclear power stations. And to think harder about the quickest possible way to get out of nuclear power generation."

"The Japanese tragedy will dramatically change the debate over nuclear power. But the issue is too serious to start fanning people's fears in election campaigns. It may be tempting for campaigners to go out hunting for votes with the suffering of the Japanese. But that would be shabby, pitiful and repellent."

Left-wing Berliner Zeitung writes:

"This hasn't hit a run-down Soviet reactor, a badly constructed Russian plutonium machine which supplied the army with material for their nuclear weapons, as was the case with Chernobyl in 1986. Then and ever since, the builders of nuclear power stations in Europe, North America and Japan boasted that a serious accident could be virtually ruled out thanks to superior Western nuclear technology."

"Every country -- Germany, the US and Japan -- claimed to have the world's best reactors. Everything was secured several times over, all conceivable problems could be handled, all eventualities were prepared for, they said."

"The disaster at Fushima shows: It's simply not true."

"It is unlikely to be a coincidence that it was an old reactor with a design from the 1960s that got into trouble. The technology of this type of plant, which also operates in Germany, is outdated. Its safety level is significantly below that of modern nuclear plants, they wouldn't get construction approval these days. The accident has reinforced the lessons to be drawn from this: The plants that were originally intended for a lifespan of 40 years must not have their lifetimes extended, as is being done everywhere both in the West and the East -- because it yields major profits for the operators."

"On the contrary: the old reactors in particular must be taken off the grid as soon as possible. Germany realized that more than a decade ago, when the center-left government negotiated the nuclear phaseout with the power companies. For the center-right risk prolongers in Berlin, Fukushima is the writing on the wall, whether they're ready to realize that or not."

"The radioactive fallout from Fukushima won't hit Germany, but the political fallout has already arrived. People are alarmed and there is major uncertainty about 'peaceful' nuclear power, not just among diehard anti-nuclear campaigners."

-- David Crossland

__._,_.___

Sobre peligros de las plantas nucleares de Jap{on

Q&A: Dangers posed by Japan's quake-hit atom plant

• 
  Sat Mar 12, 2011 10:53am EST

(Reuters) - Analysts and industry representatives gave different assessments of the potential dangers after an explosion blew the roof off one of Japan's nuclear power plants damaged in Friday's massive earthquake.
It underlined the fluid and unpredictable situation at the Fukushima Daiichi facility north of Tokyo, from which the Japanese government said radiation leaked.
The critical issue is what has happened or is happening with the reactor fuel -- which contains almost all the radioactivity in the plant -- and whether it is damaged.
"We don't know enough about what the status of the fuel is in the reactor core," Mark Hibbs of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said. "The issue is whether the core is uncovered, whether the fuel is breaking up or being damaged, or whether the fuel is melting."
WHAT HAPPENED AT THE PLANT?
The blast at the 40-year-old Daichi 1 reactor came as plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) worked to reduce pressures in the core after the total loss of power needed to keep water circulating to prevent it from overheating.
It led to fears of a disastrous meltdown at the plant, which automatically shut down after the quake, even though the government insisted that radiation levels were low.
"The most probable (cause of the explosion) is the coolant, particularly if it's water, can overheat and turn to steam more rapidly than it was designed to cope with," said nuclear fuel technology professor Timothy Abram at Manchester University.
The cause and exact location of the blast still needs to e established, said nuclear physics professor Paddy Regan at the University of Surrey. "So far it looks like it's not the reactor core that's affected, which would be good news."
The World Nuclear Association, a London-based industry body, said the blast was probably due to hydrogen igniting and that this was unlikely to cause a big accident by itself.
"It is obviously an hydrogen explosion," communications director Ian Hore-Lacy said. "If the hydrogen has ignited, then it is gone, it doesn't pose any further threat."
HOW SERIOUS COULD IT BE?
Views differ. Stratfor, a risk consultancy, said the blast appeared to have caused a reactor meltdown, but this was contradicted by others who dismissed any comparisons with the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine.
"The reactor fuel appears to have at least partially melted, and the subsequent explosion has shattered the walls and roof of the containment vessel," Stratfor said in an analysis.
"There have been reports of "white smoke," perhaps burning concrete, coming from the scene of the explosion, indicating a containment breach and the almost certain escape of significant amounts of radiation."
But Abram, the Manchester professor, said it was unlikely it would develop into anything more serious, even though this would depend on the integrity of the fuel.

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Fwd: Macroperu Japan prepares for the worst

Japan prepares for the worst

New reactor blast raises fears of meltdown / Final death toll could reach 'tens of thousands' / Markets crash over fears of economic fallout
By Andrew Buncombe in Sendai

Tuesday, 15 March 2011

Japan battled to save a nuclear power station from going into meltdown yesterday after two further explosions hit the damaged plant in Fukushima within 24 hours, leaving staff struggling to cool fuel rods and avert further problems in all three stricken reactors.
Some workers at its No 2 reactor, the site of yesterday's second blast, were evacuated, but officials sought to reassure the public that the explosions posed no immediate health threat, and that the potential reactor meltdown that has been feared would still be averted. The latest flurry of incidents has nonetheless added to an already tense mood and raised concerns about the ability of the authorities to take a proactive grip of a fast-moving situation.
In an indication of the concern about the possible threat from radiation, US authorities relocated vessels from the 7th Fleet operating in Japanese waters off the coast from Fukushima after detecting low-level radiation on 17 crew members who have been taking part in relief operations. In Sendai, the nearest large city to the epicentre of the earthquake, news of the nuclear setbacks came with fresh warnings about further possible tremors and another tsunami wave. Yesterday saw a number of after-shocks, including one that measured 6.2 on the Richter scale.
On the city's wind-whipped streets – where people scavenged for food and supplies from one emptied convenience store to the next – anxiety was universal. "We thought our building was going to fall. Yes, we are worried; we are getting away," said one woman, Tia, who added that she and her partner were leaving for Hokkaido island.
For the authorities – still trying to reach many villages and towns which were destroyed by the quake and tsunami, while also helping hundreds of thousands of people now forced from their homes – the greatest concern is what is playing out in a dark piece of theatre at the badly damaged Fukushima nuclear complex, located 150 miles north of Tokyo.
The 40-year-old complex has now seen three hydrogen explosions – one at each of its reactors – in the past four days, with plumes of smoke visible in the sky for miles around.
Yesterday afternoon, the Jiji news agency said fuel rods at the complex's No 2 reactor had been entirely exposed for around two and a half hours and a fuel rod meltdown – which could cause a major release of radioactive material – could not be ruled out. The plant operator confirmed that there was little water left in the reactor. Then last night it was reported that the rods, which had been at least partially covered by sea water in an effort to cool them, were once again exposed. Although the latest hydrogen blast, inside reactor No 2, is not the full-blown catastrophe feared, the plant operator said that radiation levels in the air around the reactor had risen fourfold after the explosion.
There have been previous reports of possible partial meltdowns of the rods at the No 1 and No 3 reactors, though experts said it was impossible to verify such claims at this stage. "Although we cannot directly check it, it's highly likely to be happening," said the Chief Cabinet Secretary, Yukio Edano.
Most nuclear experts have so far rejected fears of a nuclear disaster and radioactivity leak on the scale of Chernobyl, in 1986, or the 1979 catastrophe at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. Crucially, officials in Japan said the thick walls around the radioactive cores of the damaged reactors appeared to be intact after the earlier hydrogen blasts.
Mr Edano said that the internal containment apparatus which surrounds the No 3 reactor was intact, even if the outer building appeared to have been destroyed by the blast. Yet in the aftermath of the explosion, the government told those still present within the 13-mile evacuation zone to stay indoors. It also revealed that 11 people had been injured by the blast.
Yesterday it was reported that another 80,000 people had been evacuated from the disaster area, adding to around 450,000 who have already been told to leave their homes. While some people are staying with friends and relatives, many are making do in a network of emergency shelters that have been erected. In Sendai, large numbers of citizens have been bedding down on the floors of the headquarters of the municipal authority.
Along with trying to deal with the aftermath of the quake, which was yesterday upgraded from 8.9 to 9.0 on the Richter scale, making it one and a half times greater in magnitude than previously thought, many people are also searching for friends and relatives of whom there has been no word since last Friday. "My girlfriend's mother is missing. She is from Matsushima [a cluster of islands off the coast from Sendai] and we are looking for her," said Yuchiro Hori, who sells advertising space in a magazine. "We are looking for information on the internet and on the phone because we cannot go there – it's very dangerous."

__._,_.___

What can the Yakuza explain about Japanese politics anyway?

What can the Yakuza explain about Japanese politics anyway?

August 7th, 2010

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT
Having read and enjoyed Jacob Adelstein's Tokyo Vice, it was with considerable interest that I read his article, `The Last Yakuza` in the World Policy Journal.

Like Corey Wallace, I have no particular expertise with which to assess the role played by the Yakuza in Japanese society. But also like him, I am skeptical about what political outcomes we can actually attribute to organised crime.

In brief, Adelstein argues that after decades of deep ties to the LDP — which organizations didn't have deep ties to the LDP when it was Japan's hegemonic ruling party? — leading Yakuza organisations have shifted their allegiances to the DPJ as it took control of the upper house in 2007 and then the lower house and with it the cabinet in 2009.
The main consequence of this shift, Adelstein suggests, is that the Hatoyama cabinet included Kamei Shizuka, head of the People's New Party, who is known to have links to organised crime. Without questioning those links, I think there is a far simpler explanation for Kamei's presence in the Hatoyama government, an explanation that does not require any reference to the Yakuza. Wanting to streamline decision making in the new coalition government, the DPJ included both Kamei and his SDPJ counterpart Fukushima Mizuho in the cabinet and created a special cabinet committee to coordinate policy among the ruling parties. Kamei, I think, was there so as to concentrate coalition negotiations within the government. The ease with which Kan Naoto cut Kamei loose once he challenged the new prime minister suggests that repaying the Yakuza was low on the DPJ's list of priorities when it came to Kamei.
But this case raises the larger question asked in the title of this post: what does the Yakuza explain anyway? What political outcome over the past half-century or so of Japanese politics is different because of the influence of the Yakuza in Japanese politics?
The most obvious answer is that the pervasive influence of the Yakuza explains the impunity with which gangsters have been able to act since the end of the war (which makes the 1992 anti-organised crime law mentioned by Adelstein a puzzle worth explaining).
But what about bigger questions? The durability of LDP rule? The rise and fall of prime ministers? Foreign policy and relations with the U.S.? What is different because of the Yakuza's power? What can the Yakuza explain that other theories cannot? I suspect not much. It's possible that gangsters may have influenced the outcome of LDP leadership elections during the former ruling party's heyday, given the shady pasts of some leading LDP politicians and the wholly opaque manner in which the LDP selected its leaders for much of its history. If it were possible to identify prime ministers who came to power only because of Yakuza support, it would perhaps be possible to identify indirect consequences of Yakuza influence, but as Adelstein's own career shows, becoming a Yakuza expert requires time, energy, and no small risk to one's person — all for exploring what may be nothing more than an auxiliary explanation.
That's not to say that the Yakuza are of no interest to political scientists who study Japan. One question worth addressing is why the Yakuza are so pervasive in the first place, at which point attention naturally turns to Italy, that other Axis power occupied by and then allied with the United States (which failed to purge and in fact developed links with far-right elements) and governed by a hegemonic conservative party for the duration of the cold war. Additionally, it may be fruitful to study the Yakuza in comparison with other interest groups that had long supported the LDP only to watch their fortunes wane during the lost decade(s). After all, Yakuza groups are interest groups, of a sort: interested in the regulation of organised crime. Like other interest groups, they had to adjust their political strategies in response to uncertain political and economic environments.
As such, while the Yakuza are an unlikely explanation for major political outcomes in Japan, they are a part of the landscape and observers should be cognisant of their role. For that we are lucky that Adelstein is working so hard to expose the inner workings of Japanese organised crime.

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El Desastre de Japón Se transforma en uno económico

Tokyo Shares End Day Down 11%

By COLIN NG And GA-WOON PHILIP VAHN

SINGAPORE—Tokyo shares led Asia stock markets lower, with the main index dropping 11% amid widespread worries about the possibility of a nuclear catastrophe. An afternoon bounce brought them back from a bottom more than 14% down.

Japanese stocks were pressured by news of another explosion at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, this time at its No. 4 reactor. This was shortly after radiation levels rose sharply as the No. 2 reactor suffered an explosion following damage to its suppression pool. Japan's prime minister Naoto Kan said there's a high risk of elevated levels of radiation from the crippled reactors, and urged people within 30 kilometers of the plant to stay indoors.

"What the world is watching right now is whether Tepco's Fukushima nuclear power plant is going to turn into Chernobyl," said Norihiro Fujito, senior investment strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities.

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Employees of the Tokyo Stock Exchange work at the bourse in Tokyo March 14, 2011.

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Japan's Nikkei Stock Average ended the day at 8605.15, extending Monday's 6.2% drop. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 finished down 2.1% and South Korea's Kospi Composite down 2.4%. In afternoon trading the Shanghai Composite Index was down 1.9% and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index down 3.1%.

All 33 of Japan's Topix subindexes were lower in heavy trade with Tokyo Electric Power, the operator of the damaged nuclear-power plants, down the daily limit of 25% after a 24% drop Monday.

"Foreign investors are rushing to sell nuclear-power-plant-related stocks," said Masayoshi Yano, senior market analyst at Meiwa Securities. "There is no sense of calmness to examine the health of the Japanese economy as a whole."

Exporters were lower due to production halts with Toyota Motor down 7.4% and Sony down 8.9%.

The Tokyo Stock Exchange restricted selling by brokerages for arbitrage trading on their own accounts once the Topix index had fallen more than 100 points from the previous session. The Topix bottomed at 725.90 points, and the exchange lifted the measure after it recovered to the 776.96. The Topix closed at 766.73, down 80.23 points or 9.5%.

The Japanese headlines sent stocks across the region sharply lower.

Disaster in Japan

• Japan's Nuclear Crisis Escalates
• Obama Stands by Nuclear Power
• Rescuers Scramble as Death Toll Surges
• A Nation's Vigil of Hope and Loss
• Nuclear Crisis Feeds Regulation Doubts
• Radiation Is Part of the Modern Life
• Firms Assess the Damage From Quake
• Reactor Failures Spark Safety Questions
• Uranium Firms Take Hit
• Opinion: Japan Does Not Face Another Chernobyl
• Heard: Aftershocks for Japan's Power Industry
• Complete Coverage: Japan Quake

In China, "there is panic selling in A-share market as investors are fretting over the reactor leaks in Japan, and further downside is likely to depend on whether the leaks in Japan can be placed under control," said Tang Yonggang, an analyst from Hong Yuan Securities.

Coal miners and gold firms were leading the declines, tracking the retreat in global oil and gold prices. Coal firm China Coal Energy was down 3.2%, while China Shenhua Energy shed 3.3%. Gold play Shandong Gold-Mining eased 3.3% and Zijin Mining dropped 4.3%.

In Australia, the news of Japan's nuclear crisis encouraged selling. "Investors are standing back from the market," said BBY senior institutional trader Peter Copeland. "But they have already discounted a lot of bad news."

Shares in Australian uranium miners and explorers extended Monday's sharp falls as Japan's nuclear disaster unfolded. Jonathan Barratt, managing director at Commodity Broking Services, described the falls as an "initial knee-jerk" move on a loss of investor confidence and said that until some facts emerge about the actual damage to the Japanese reactors and the sensationalizing moderates, it will be difficult to price uranium stocks.

Among pure uranium stocks, Energy Resources of Australia fell 14.3%, Paladin Energy shed 17%, Extract Resources dropped 18% while Uranex lost 24% and Bannerman fell 33%.

Materials stocks were also lower, with BHP Billiton falling 2.5% and Rio Tinto 2.2% lower.

Korean shares were lower as foreigners turned net sellers amid the uncertainty generated by the latest explosion at the Japanese nuclear power plant.

Technology and steel producers were lower after outperforming on Monday. Samsung Electronics fell 3.9%, LG Electronics lost 2.9% and Posco shed 3.3%.

Elsewhere in the region, New Zealand's NZX-50 closed 1.4% lower and Philippine shares down 0.6%. In markets still trading, Malaysian shares was down 1.1%, Singapore's Straits Times Index was down 2.5%, Thai shares were down 1.6% and India's Sensex was down 1.4%,

Foreign exchange markets saw whippy trade. Prime Minister Kan's comments sparked a wave of selling as dealers rushed to dump riskier currencies such as the Australian dollar. Other regional currencies were not spared with heavy selling in the Singapore dollar, the Indian rupee, the Korean won and the New Zealand dollar.

Lead June Japanese government bond futures were sharply higher, up 0.98 at 140.90 points as the Nikkei plunged. The yield on the 10-year cash JGB was down 0.04 percentage point at 1.165%.

It was hard to predict how the crisis at the crippled nuclear power plants will end, and that was boosting demand for safe-haven assets, said Deutsche Securities strategist Makoto Yamashita. Also, "there is a risk that, even if the government tries to provide fiscal help (on post-quake reconstruction), production activities and sentiment (among firms and households) will deteriorate sharply," he added.

Spot gold was at $1,409.50 per troy ounce, down $19.30 from its New York settlement Monday.

Nymex April crude oil futures were down $2.19 at $99.00 per barrel on Globex.

The Real Housewives of Wall Street

Why is the Federal Reserve forking over $220 million in bailout money to the wives of two Morgan Stanley bigwigs?

America has two national budgets, one official, one unofficial. The official budget is public record and hotly debated: Money comes in as taxes and goes out as jet fighters, DEA agents, wheat subsidies and Medicare, plus pensions and bennies for that great untamed socialist menace called a unionized public-sector workforce that Republicans are always complaining about. According to popular legend, we're broke and in so much debt that 40 years from now our granddaughters will still be hooking on weekends to pay the medical bills of this year's retirees from the IRS, the SEC and the Department of Energy.
Why Isn't Wall Street in Jail?
Most Americans know about that budget. What they don't know is that there is another budget of roughly equal heft, traditionally maintained in complete secrecy. After the financial crash of 2008, it grew to monstrous dimensions, as the government attempted to unfreeze the credit markets by handing out trillions to banks and hedge funds. And thanks to a whole galaxy of obscure, acronym-laden bailout programs, it eventually rivaled the "official" budget in size — a huge roaring river of cash flowing out of the Federal Reserve to destinations neither chosen by the president nor reviewed by Congress, but instead handed out by fiat by unelected Fed officials using a seemingly nonsensical and apparently unknowable methodology.
This article appears in the April 28, 2011 issue of Rolling Stone. The issue will be available on newsstands and in the online archive April 15.
Now, following an act of Congress that has forced the Fed to open its books from the bailout era, this unofficial budget is for the first time becoming at least partially a matter of public record. Staffers in the Senate and the House, whose queries about Fed spending have been rebuffed for nearly a century, are now poring over 21,000 transactions and discovering a host of outrages and lunacies in the "other" budget. It is as though someone sat down and made a list of every individual on earth who actually did not need emergency financial assistance from the United States government, and then handed them the keys to the public treasure. The Fed sent billions in bailout aid to banks in places like Mexico, Bahrain and Bavaria, billions more to a spate of Japanese car companies, more than $2 trillion in loans each to Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, and billions more to a string of lesser millionaires and billionaires with Cayman Islands addresses. "Our jaws are literally dropping as we're reading this," says Warren Gunnels, an aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. "Every one of these transactions is outrageous."
Wall Street's Big Win
But if you want to get a true sense of what the "shadow budget" is all about, all you have to do is look closely at the taxpayer money handed over to a single company that goes by a seemingly innocuous name: Waterfall TALF Opportunity. At first glance, Waterfall's haul doesn't seem all that huge — just nine loans totaling some $220 million, made through a Fed bailout program. That doesn't seem like a whole lot, considering that Goldman Sachs alone received roughly $800 billion in loans from the Fed. But upon closer inspection, Waterfall TALF Opportunity boasts a couple of interesting names among its chief investors: Christy Mack and Susan Karches.
Christy is the wife of John Mack, the chairman of Morgan Stanley. Susan is the widow of Peter Karches, a close friend of the Macks who served as president of Morgan Stanley's investment-banking division. Neither woman appears to have any serious history in business, apart from a few philanthropic experiences. Yet the Federal Reserve handed them both low-interest loans of nearly a quarter of a billion dollars through a complicated bailout program that virtually guaranteed them millions in risk-free income.
RS Politics Daily: Political news and commentary from Rolling Stone writers and editors
The technical name of the program that Mack and Karches took advantage of is TALF, short for Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. But the federal aid they received actually falls under a broader category of bailout initiatives, designed and perfected by Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, called "giving already stinking rich people gobs of money for no fucking reason at all." If you want to learn how the shadow budget works, follow along. This is what welfare for the rich looks like.
In August 2009, John Mack, at the time still the CEO of Morgan Stanley, made an interesting life decision. Despite the fact that he was earning the comparatively low salary of just $800,000, and had refused to give himself a bonus in the midst of the financial crisis, Mack decided to buy himself a gorgeous piece of property — a 107-year-old limestone carriage house on the Upper East Side of New York, complete with an indoor 12-car garage, that had just been sold by the prestigious Mellon family for $13.5 million. Either Mack had plenty of cash on hand to close the deal, or he got some help from his wife, Christy, who apparently bought the house with him.
The Macks make for an interesting couple. John, a Lebanese-American nicknamed "Mack the Knife" for his legendary passion for firing people, has one of the most recognizable faces on Wall Street, physically resembling a crumpled, half-burned baked potato with a pair of overturned furry horseshoes for eyebrows. Christy is thin, blond and rich — a sort of still-awake Sunny von Bulow with hobbies. Her major philanthropic passion is endowments for alternative medicine, and she has attained the level of master at Reiki, the Japanese practice of "palm healing." The only other notable fact on her public résumé is that her sister was married to Charlie Rose.
It's hard to imagine a pair of people you would less want to hand a giant welfare check to — yet that's exactly what the Fed did. Just two months before the Macks bought their fancy carriage house in Manhattan, Christy and her pal Susan launched their investment initiative called Waterfall TALF. Neither seems to have any experience whatsoever in finance, beyond Susan's penchant for dabbling in thoroughbred racehorses. But with an upfront investment of $15 million, they quickly received $220 million in cash from the Fed, most of which they used to purchase student loans and commercial mortgages. The loans were set up so that Christy and Susan would keep 100 percent of any gains on the deals, while the Fed and the Treasury (read: the taxpayer) would eat 90 percent of the losses. Given out as part of a bailout program ostensibly designed to help ordinary people by kick-starting consumer lending, the deals were a classic heads-I-win, tails-you-lose investment.
So how did the government come to address a financial crisis caused by the collapse of a residential-mortgage bubble by giving the wives of a couple of Morgan Stanley bigwigs free money to make essentially risk-free investments in student loans and commercial real estate? The answer is: by degrees. The history of the bailout era reads like one of those awful stories about what happens when a long-dormant criminal compulsion goes unchecked. The Peeping Tom next door stares through a few bathroom windows, doesn't get caught, and decides to break in and steal a pair of panties. Next thing you know, he's upgraded to homemade dungeons, tri-state serial rampages and throwing cheerleaders into a panel truck.
It was the same with the bailouts. They started out small, with the government throwing a few hundred billion in public money to prop up genuinely insolvent firms like Bear Stearns and AIG. Then came TARP and a few other programs that were designed to stave off bank failures and dispose of the toxic mortgage-backed securities that were a root cause of the financial crisis. But before long, the Fed began buying up every distressed investment on Wall Street, even those that were in no danger of widespread defaults: commercial real estate loans, credit- card loans, auto loans, student loans, even loans backed by the Small Business Administration. What started off as a targeted effort to stop the bleeding in a few specific trouble spots became a gigantic feeding frenzy. It was "free money for shit," says Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation. "It turned into 'Give us your crap that you can't get rid of otherwise.' "
The impetus for this sudden manic expansion of the bailouts was a masterful bluff by Wall Street executives. Once the money started flowing from the Federal Reserve, the executives began moaning to their buddies at the Fed, claiming that they were suddenly afraid of investing in anything — student loans, car notes, you name it — unless their profits were guaranteed by the state. "You ever watch soccer, where the guy rolls six times to get a yellow card?" says William Black, a former federal bank regulator who teaches economics and law at the University of Missouri. "That's what this is. If you have power and connections, they will give you a freebie deal — if you're good at whining."
This is where TALF fits into the bailout picture. Created just after Barack Obama's election in November 2008, the program's ostensible justification was to spur more consumer lending, which had dried up in the midst of the financial crisis. But instead of lending directly to car buyers and credit-card holders and students — that would have been socialism! — the Fed handed out a trillion dollars to banks and hedge funds, almost interest-free. In other words, the government lent taxpayer money to the same assholes who caused the crisis, so that they could then lend that money back out on the market virtually risk-free, at an enormous profit.
Cue your Billy Mays voice, because wait, there's more! A key aspect of TALF is that the Fed doles out the money through what are known as non-recourse loans. Essentially, this means that if you don't pay the Fed back, it's no big deal. The mechanism works like this: Hedge Fund Goon borrows, say, $100 million from the Fed to buy crappy loans, which are then transferred to the Fed as collateral. If Hedge Fund Goon decides not to repay that $100 million, the Fed simply keeps its pile of crappy securities and calls everything even.
This is the deal of a lifetime. Think about it: You borrow millions, buy a bunch of crap securities and stash them on the Fed's books. If the securities lose money, you leave them on the Fed's lap and the public eats the loss. But if they make money, you take them back, cash them in and repay the funds you borrowed from the Fed. "Remember that crazy guy in the commercials who ran around covered in dollar bills shouting, 'The government is giving out free money!' " says Black. "As crazy as he was, this is making it real."
This whole setup — in which millionaires and billionaires gambled on mountains of dangerous securities, with taxpayers providing the stake and assuming almost all of the risk — is the reason that it's insanely premature for Wall Street to claim that the bailouts have actually made money for the government. We simply can't make that determination until the final bill comes in on all the dicey securities we financed during the bailout feeding frenzy.
In the case of Waterfall TALF Opportunity, here's what we know: The company was founded in June 2009 with $14.87 million of investment capital, money that likely came from Christy Mack and Susan Karches. The two Wall Street wives then used the $220 million they got from the Fed to buy up a bunch of securities, including a large pool of commercial mortgages managed by Credit Suisse, a company John Mack once headed. Those securities were valued at $253.6 million, though the Fed refuses to explain how it arrived at that estimate. And here's the kicker: Of the $220 million the two wives got from the Fed, roughly $150 million had not been paid back as of last fall — meaning that you and I are still on the hook for most of whatever the Wall Street spouses bought on their government-funded shopping spree.
The public has no way of knowing how much Christy Mack and Susan Karches earned on these transactions, because the Fed has repeatedly declined to provide any information about how it priced the individual securities bought as part of programs like TALF. In the Waterfall deal, for instance, we know the Fed pledged some $14 million against a block of securities called "Credit Suisse Commercial Mortgage Trust Series 2007-C2" — but that data is meaningless without knowing how many units were bought. It's like saying the Fed gave Waterfall $14 million to buy cars. Did Waterfall pay $5,000 per car, or $500,000? We have no idea. "There's no way of validating or invalidating the Fed's process in TALF without this pricing information," says Gary Aguirre, a former SEC official who was fired years ago after he tried to interview John Mack in an insider-trading case.
In early April, in an attempt to learn exactly how much Mack and Karches made on the TALF deals, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote a letter to Waterfall asking 21 detailed questions about the transactions. In addition, Sen. Sanders has personally asked Fed chief Bernanke to provide more complete information on the TALF loans given not only to Christy Mack but to gazillionaires like former Miami Dolphins owner H. Wayne Huizenga and hedge-fund shark John Paulson. But Bernanke bluntly refused to provide the information — and the Fed has similarly stonewalled other oversight agencies, including the General Accounting Office and TARP's special inspector general.
Christy Mack and Susan Karches did not respond to requests for comments for this story. But even without more information about the loans they got from the Fed, we know that TALF wasn't the only risk-free money being handed over to Wall Street. During the financial crisis, the Fed routinely made billions of dollars in "emergency" loans to big banks at near-zero interest. Many of the banks then turned around and used the money to buy Treasury bonds at higher interest rates — essentially loaning the money back to the government at an inflated rate. "People talk about how these were loans that were paid back," says a congressional aide who has studied the transactions. "But when the state is lending money at zero percent and the banks are turning around and lending that money back to the state at three percent, how is that different from just handing rich people money?"
Those kinds of deals were the essence of the bailout — and the vast mountains of near-zero government cash turned companies facing bankruptcy into monstrous profit machines. In 2008 and 2009, while Christy Mack was busy getting her little TALF loans for $220 million, her husband's bank hauled in $2 trillion in emergency Fed loans. During the same period, Goldman borrowed nearly $800 billion. Shortly afterward, the two banks reported a combined annual profit of $14.5 billion.
As crazy as it is to lend to banks at near zero percent and borrow back from them at three percent, one could at least argue that the policy may have aided American companies by providing banks more cash to lend. But how do you explain the host of other bailout transactions now being examined by Congress? Like the Fed's massive purchases of securities in foreign automakers, including BMW, Volkswagen, Honda, Mitsubishi and Nissan? Or the nearly $5 billion in cheap credit the Fed extended to Toyota and Mitsubishi? Sure, those companies have factories and dealerships in the U.S. — but does it really make sense to give them free cash at the same time taxpayers were being asked to bail out Chrysler and GM? Seems a little crazy to fund the competition of the very automakers you're trying to rescue.
And then there are the bailout deals that make no sense at all. Republicans go mad over spending on health care and school for Mexican illegals. So why aren't they flipping out over the $9.6 billion in loans the Fed made to the Central Bank of Mexico? How do we explain the $2.2 billion in loans that went to the Korea Development Bank, the biggest state bank of South Korea, whose sole purpose is to promote development in South Korea? And at a time when America is borrowing from the Middle East at interest rates of three percent, why did the Fed extend $35 billion in loans to the Arab Banking Corporation of Bahrain at interest rates as low as one quarter of one point?
Even more disturbing, the major stakeholder in the Bahrain bank is none other than the Central Bank of Libya, which owns 59 percent of the operation. In fact, the Bahrain bank just received a special exemption from the U.S. Treasury to prevent its assets from being frozen in accord with economic sanctions. That's right: Muammar Qaddafi received more than 70 loans from the Federal Reserve, along with the Real Housewives of Wall Street.
Perhaps the most irritating facet of all of these transactions is the fact that hundreds of millions of Fed dollars were given out to hedge funds and other investors with addresses in the Cayman Islands. Many of those addresses belong to companies with American affiliations — including prominent Wall Street names like Pimco, Blackstone and . . . Christy Mack. Yes, even Waterfall TALF Opportunity is an offshore company. It's one thing for the federal government to look the other way when Wall Street hotshots evade U.S. taxes by registering their investment companies in the Cayman Islands. But subsidizing tax evasion? Giving it a federal bailout? What the fuck?
As America girds itself for another round of lunatic political infighting over which barely-respirating social program or urgently necessary federal agency must have their budgets permanently sacrificed to the cause of billionaires being able to keep their third boats in the water, it's important to point out just how scarce money isn't in certain corners of the public-spending universe. In the coming months, when you watch Republican congressional stooges play out the desperate comedy of solving America's deficit problems by making fewer photocopies of proposed bills, or by taking an ax to budgetary shrubberies like NPR or the SEC, remember Christy Mack and her fancy new carriage house. There is no belt-tightening on the other side of the tracks. Just a free lunch that never ends.

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