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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (603955)	3/16/2011 9:00:48 PM
From: bentway	1 Recommendation Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575290

Japan has NO native energy resources - which is why they adopted nuclear energy. Given an alternative, I'm SURE they would have done otherwise.

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (603955)	3/17/2011 1:02:50 AM
From: koan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1575290

A friend of mine just posted this. This is how I see it. "Yes, Japan. somebody on Discovery Board was asking today whether I thought the TSX would go down any more than 20 or 25 percent. I said investors don't like surprises. And that I have never seen a global situation with as much potential for bad surprises as the one we now face as a planet. The Middle East was already bad enough. The Saudis are using guns on crowds in Bahrain. But this is about Japan. By the time you've seen your third graphic on CNN, sadly, Japan does sound like just the disaster du jour. But it is not. This is a real-time nightmare in one of the most populated areas of the planet, with potentially devastating implications. What could be about to happen in Japan is: a major, multiple-source thermonuclear meltdown with the potential to cause severe radiation illness in a heavily populated and economically very important island nation. Horrible to even write, but highly possible. At its best, this radiation might be limited to north Japan, where it could be watered down and then fade into being a nuclear wrecking ground like Chernobyl. But there are two really bad situations here that can get a lot worse. one is for the core on one of these six reactors, just one, to go into full thermonuclear meltdown. The other is if one of the pools of spent fuel rods starts its own thermonuclear burnout. As best I can figure out tonight, either or both event has already started happening. Worst case, either event, or both, could render large portions of Japan unuseable. russia and china are lesser risk, but they are at risk. Another major unknowable: what if a very large quantity of radiation gets airborne and travels to the west coast of north america? that is the prevailing wind, west to east. so that is the human life and safety equation, layered on top of earthquake and tsunami damage. There are so many more implications that it is mind-boggling. Fisheries destroyed? Farm land poisoned? Oil and LNG supplies strained? Nukes decommissioned around world? In comparison with the potential loss of human life, it seems almost trivial to mention the next two UNKNOWABLEs, even though it is appropriate to understand this if you are an investor. They are wholesale dumping of bonds, and forced asset liquidation. * Japan holds tons of u.s. treasuries. $600 billion? I can't remember. Are they going to have to liquidate them? they already have a high percentage of their own debt per capita and will undoubtedly be floating new debt. so repatriating the cash from those bonds and t-bills could become a necessity. maybe not. i sure hope not. rates have been held artificially low in the u.s. to prop up the economy. but sudden liquidations by one major holder like Japan could trigger a financial tsunami of bond selling around the world. then there is the potential for further forced selling of any assets retaining value. wew got a brief taste of that Monday with the big sudden selloffs in precious metals and other commodities. Just because markets leveled out after that does not mean forced liquidation is over. How do you plug in the possiblity of a bond collapse or further margin calls or forced asset sales into the potential percentage move of the TSX? I certainly cannot. All I can do is form an opinion about how bad it could get, and adjust my exposure accordingly. I honestly hope every bad possible outcome I just mentioned turns out NOT to be the case, and that the world in a few weeks or a month is staggering back to normal. I will be just fine with that.