NHK has been reporting that banks around Japan are limiting ATM withdrawals.
Many Japanese are angry because they are having a hard time getting access to their money, in order to buy necessities.
Banks say their clients can still walk in, during limited hours, to make larger withdrawals. The banks are blaming the disaster situation, including power outages, for the reason for limiting access to ATMs.
Just one more reason to keep your money under the mattress.
A Fidelity Investments survey shows that 4 out of 10 rich people, with an average wealth of $3.5 million, say it’s not enough. Maybe they’re right. Most of those surveyed are thinking about being able to retire. They say $7.5 million in assets is required to retire comfortably.
Is this proof of how bad our economy is?
If the rich are saying you need at least $7.5 million to retire, then the rest of us are truly in trouble. In fact why bother continuing to play the rat race game? Why bother with the keeping up with the Joneses game? Why bother throwing a good portion of your income at a 401k retirement plan? It’s clear that the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens, even those pumping money into retirement schemes, are never going to hit the magic $7.5 million mark that 42% of rich people say is needed just to retire.
I’m not even Middle Class. My income has steadily been going down since January 2000. Now, my before tax deductions income is less than $20,000 per year. I know people worse off than that.
Is this proof of how bad our economy is? If it is, the rest of us are f**ked!
Fidelity Investments surveys a thousand of some of its richest clients, to find out how they feel about their wealth. The survey involves clients with an average of $3.5 million in investment assets.
For 2010, 42% said they do not feel rich. In 2009 it was 46% that did not feel rich. That’s about 4 out of 10 rich people who think they are still poor.
How much would they need to feel rich? According to the survey, $7.5 million.
Fidelity Investments also said 55% of the wealth in the United States is held by only 5% of the people. This backs up what the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) said in one of their recently released surveys.
Sounds like some of the rich are suffering from some kind of personality, or obsessive compulsive, disorder. Perhaps some kind of factitious disorder. But what about the rest of us? After all we’re letting them run our economy, and in effect our lives.
A philanthropy newspaper reports that international non-profit donations to help Japan, one week after the 9.0 quake, total $87 million.
Compared to the number of donations, within the same time period, to Haiti and survivors of Hurricane Katrina, it is piddly.
Haiti received $275 million in donations to non-profits one week after their big quake. Areas hit by Hurricane Katrina saw $522 million one week after that disaster.
This could be due to the bad economic situation, but I have seen plenty of comments on the web, many made by people in the United States, that show that a lot of people think Japan “deserves” this situation. Xenophobia continues to build.
A Wall Street Journal article suggests that Libyan rebels getting help from Egypt, Qatar and other Arab countries, all with U.S. approval.
Libyan rebels have praised Qatar from day one for their help.
Egypt is supposedly sending the rebels weapons (I wondered where the rebels got all those new looking heavy guns and missiles). Hani Souflakis, a Libyan businessman in Cairo said “We know the Egyptian military council is helping us, but they can’t be so visible.” Souflakis is a Libyan rebel liaison with the Egyptian government since the uprising began.
Libyan rebels admit they have been armed from the outside, but will not say who is arming them. Also, the Wall Street journal reports that, all of a sudden, the rebels are using aircraft to launch air strikes against Libyan government troops (when the hell did they get aircraft?). Some sources say the rebels are using captured Libyan aircraft, but that the rebels had to get spare parts, and trained air & ground crews from out side the country.
The Arab League actually drafted the UN Security Council’s declaration of a no fly zone.
All this is proving that crazy sounding Gaddafi (Gadhafi, Kaddafi, Qaddafi, they all work) might be right when he claims that this whole “revolution” is a foreign act of war to get total control of Libya’s oil.
Bank of Japan officials began selling off Yen, to buy U.S. Dollars.
Besides getting a deal, the move was to prevent a negative impact on world markets. The DOW and the Dollar went up as a result.
G7 (Group of Seven Industrial Countries) also agreed to take actions that would help float international markets (buying U.S. dollars).
General Motors (GM) has announced that due to auto parts shortages, caused by the disasters in Japan, they will have to shut down some production in the United States.
A GM plant in Louisiana is the first to be closed, for a week, as a result.
Toyota had announced that it would slow production in its U.S. factories. Officials say production will not be affected at their engine plants. Instead of closing plants altogether, Toyota has eliminated overtime work.
Ford says so far their U.S. operations are not affected, Honda said the same thing.
Stock markets in Japan closed down again. Blame being put on the increase in the Yen’s value. Bank of Japan injected more cash, for the 4th day. Japanese investors are becoming disheartened with what seems like futile efforts to stop a nuclear disaster. It is predicted that trading in Japanese stock markets will become more volatile in the days to come. There are signs that Japanese authorities will intervene in the currency market.
The U.S. dollar has fallen in value against the Japanese Yen. This is because Japanese government and corporations are cashing in their chips. They are cashing in the foreign bonds they hold, in order to raise cash to help deal with the disasters. Corporations, including insurance companies which expect pay out huge claims, are trying to acquire as much Japanese Yen as they can. This is called “repatriation” in the financial markets.
The Bank of Japan will take advantage of the rising value of the Yen, by selling Yen to foreign buyers in order to bring in foreign cash to the national bank.
Japan has been one of the most prolific buyers of U.S. debt, in the form of U.S. bonds. Japan itself is in huge debt, but until now was able to continue buying U.S. bonds, helping the U.S. government. The disasters have forced Japan to sell back bonds in order to raise cash to help deal with ongoing crisis, and for rebuilding. Japanese corporations have to raise cash due to the fact that most factories have shut down, which means they’re not making anything to sell. So Japanese corporations have to sell the foreign bonds they hold.
This is the beginning of a possible economic dominoes affect on the World Economy.
For a third day, the DOW fell big, along with other U.S. stock markets. Stock markets around the world being affected. This is because Japan has become the “parts” supplier to the global economy. Auto parts to electronic chips are made in Japan. This production has come to a virtual stand still. One analyst said that if this situation lasts a few weeks (best case) consumers can expect noticeable increases in prices.
It must be remembered that the Great Depression, that hit the United States in the 1930s, was not solely caused by the investment/finance crash of ’29. What put the U.S. into a Great Depression was the loss of its main industry at the time; agriculture. Because of the quake, tsunami, and now nuclear disaster, Japan has essentially lost its main industries.
Until the Second World War, agriculture was the biggest industry in the U.S. Most Americans worked in farming, or agriculture related jobs. The industry was hit by a disaster that was a combination of Mother Earth, and man made. The plain states, and mid west, had been dealing with a major drought, and, farming techniques destroyed the top soil. This is where the term “Dust Bowl” came from.
The result was that hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their jobs and their homes, just from the collapse of the agriculture industry. Combined with the losses of the finance/investment industries (which affected manufacturing) this created the Great Depression.
The World is already in a major financial crisis, bigger than what hit the world prior to the Great Depression in the U.S. (other countries, like Germany had already experience a depression). Now we have the natural/man made disasters that could push the World into a Great Depression.
Never before have the economies of the World been so tied together. We have a dominoes situation. Japan, being a major parts supplier, could be the dominoe that starts the fall.