Thai Floods and Yen Appreciation

Given the poor track record of intervention, unilateral or multilateral, sterilized or unsterilized, there may be no compelling need to understand why the $100 bln intervention is not sticking. All sorts of possible explanations seem partly at play. Intervention has not been repeated. The failure to push the greenback above JPY80 lent bullish yen safe haven views intact. Spot intervention is less effective than repeated operations in the swaps and options market too, as the SNB is thought to have done.

In any event, another force may be at work and that is the floods in Thailand. They have hit the Japanese auto sector hard as Thailand is an important production base. Other industries have also been hit as reports by Hitachi and Canon indicate

Tankan and Beyond

Japan is set to release a slew of economic data on July 1. Of these the jobless rate is probably the least important. It is lagging indicator, though softness in the job-to-applicant ratio would warn of no quick improvement. On the other hand, the recovery in retail sales in May suggest overall household spending is beginning to recovery from the sharp contraction

Fukushima Daiichi Disaster Prompts Closure of Another Plant

As workers continue to battle with the crippled Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, more impacts from the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl are starting to arise. The latest impact will hit car manufacturers, with plants in central Japan hit the hardest: power firm Chubu Electric has agreed to shut its Hamaoka Nuclear Plant until it can build better defenses against the kind of massive earthquake and tsunami that hit on March 11, and Hamaoka provides power to at least 15 auto plants

The Gulf of Mexico – One Year Later

A year later, the waters are still murky, but a few things are starting to become clear.

For energy investors, the most important aspect of the disaster was the moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. That ban was lifted in late February, but new safety requirements have slowed restarts on the 33 rigs that were halted, and Washington has so far issued only a handful of new permits for Gulf oil exploration. So what impact does an almost year-long stoppage in drilling have on oil production?

On the environment, scientists agree that the chemicals were effective in dispersing the oil. But the most important questions still remain unanswered: what long-term effects will the dispersant chemicals and the dispersed oil have on the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem

Slow progress at Fukushima Daiichi

The outcome at the embattled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant is so important to the future of nuclear power that we thought an update would be in order. The long and the short of it is that Tepco is making progress, but oh so slowly

Coal News: Australia’s Carbon Tax Battle and How Natural Disasters Are Pushing Prices Up

Australia’s powerful coal industry is rocking the country’s political boat again. It was only 10 months ago that former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd lost his job over an emissions trading scheme that the mining industry opposed vehemently. Now his successor, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, is attempting to revisit the issue, and so far it is not going well

Japan is even worse than the economic data suggest

The power shortages and damaged factories are taking a larger toll than was initially evident. Press reports, for example, warn that the contagion via the supply chains may have greater global impact, which in turn could impact the manufacturing activity outside of Japan. Toyota, the world’s largest auto producer, has indicated that its output collapsed by nearly 2/3 in March compared with a year earlier. Honda’s loss of output was similar while Nissan reports its auto output was cut by a little more than half. One press report indicated that Toyota will cuts its output from its Melbourne, Australia plant by half this month and next, citing a shortage of parts that were to be shipped from Japan.
While the disruption emanating from Japan will hit other auto sectors on the margin, the disruption of the Japanese economy itself appears more severe. Moody’s today revised this year to 0.0%-1.0% from 1.5% and with downside risks

A few brief comments on America’s fiscal choices

The private sector (particularly the household sector) is overly indebted. The level of debt households now carry cannot be supported by income at the present levels of consumption. The natural tendency, therefore, is toward more saving and less spending in the private sector (although asset price appreciation can attenuate this through the Wealth Effect). That

Notes from Private Briefing with BOJ

By Marc Chandler The BOJ’s rep office in NY invited a number of analysts to meet the Deputy Director of the stats office and hear a presentation about the economic impact from the recent disaster. The key take away points from the BOJ is that disaster may not be as costly, but it will take

Confessions of an Investor

By Niels Jensen The Absolute Return Letter, April 2011 “When models turn on, brains turn off.” Til Schulman I have been thinking a great deal about risk over the past couple of years. The depth of the financial crisis took many of us by surprise. I made mistakes. I am sure you made mistakes. In

Surely There Is Nothing “Funny” About What Is Going On In Japan?

By Edward Hugh As Japanese officials continue to toil away in what we all hope will be a successful bid to avert a worst case nuclear meltdown, even while thousands of Japanese remain missing and unaccounted for, financial market participants across the globe have been struggling to answer one and the same question: just how

Useful links on Japan, nuclear energy and radiation

Here are some links that seem useful in the context of the Japanese Fukushima Daiichi 1 nuclear power plant situation. I also have a picture about radiation levels in Japanese below. The Haaretz link is related because it shows that some might use this situation to conduct other nuclear activities ‘under the radar’ as the