On the night of 05 July 2011, the Japanese Prime Minister issued an order to conduct stress tests on all nuclear reactors in Japan.
The tests are based on European Union standards. The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency says Japan’s reactors are safe, but many Japanese citizens think otherwise. Several prefectural governments are refusing to allow reactors to re-start. The new EU based tests are meant to ease any remaining fears among the people.
Standard & Poor’s is warning that a French plan to “rollover” Greek debt will force Greece into default. The plan was put forth by the Fédération Bancaire Française.
S & P’s is not the only finance rating company to make such a claim. It’s complicated, but basically they claim the French plan would result in current “investors” in Greek bonds receiving much less of a return on their investment, so much so that S & P’s is willing to declare Greece in default.
The plan was approved by the only economic powerhouse in the European Union: Germany.
“In our view, Greece’s near-term reliance on European Union and International Monetary Fund official financing, the government’s difficulty in reducing its sizable fiscal deficit, and the current pricing of Greek government debt in the secondary market all underscore the Hellenic Republic’s weak creditworthiness and, consequently, point to a ‘realistic possibility’ that financing option would fit the ‘distressed’ category.”-Standard & Poor’s
Almost four months after the world’s worst nuclear accident, is the Japanese government finally taking serious action in Fukushima Prefecture?
On 04 July 2011, the Japanese government announced they will take over all radiation monitoring in Fukushima, including the monitoring being done by Tokyo Electric Power Company.
This comes after growing complaints by residents of Fukushima Prefecture, that the government wasn’t doing enough. Already several cities have begun their own decontamination efforts. One city, Date, said they were going to bill the government and TEPCo.
Residents are also upset about the government’s targeted evacuations. They’re based on radiation levels, however there are different groups taking those readings, and it’s confusing residents.
Before the government decision to take over radiation monitoring, testing was being done by local governments, independent groups, universities and Tokyo Electric. Residents felt it was about time for some standardization.
The Japanese central government will use their monitoring data to determine future evacuations.
A group of residents of the city of Moriya say they will begin monitoring radiation levels, because the central government can not.
Moriya is 200 kilometers (124 miles) from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, yet it is showing some of the highest radiation levels in the area.
Residents say when they approached the central Japanese government with their concerns, they were told their government was being overwhelmed by the nuclear crisis, and did not have the man power to conduct the radiation monitoring in their area!
The city of Date, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, will undergo intensive decontamination. This announcement comes after the central Japanese government announced the evacuation of 113 more households.
City officials, and residents, are not happy with the central government’s targeted evacuations. Many residents want a mass evacuation, because radiation levels are on the increase all over the city.
To try and alleviate the concerns of the people living in Date, city officials have decided to undertake decontamination efforts, on their own. They claim they will decontaminate every building and home in the city. They also claim they will decontaminate the surrounding mountain sides.
How are they going to pay for it? No worries, they plan on sending Tokyo Electric Power Company, and the central Japanese government, a huge bill.
The Chinese government is contemplating another increase for interest rates, in an attempt to fight off inflation.
On top of that, the Chinese government has ordered banks to tighten their hold on cash. Currently Chinese banks are required to hold back 21.5% of their cash. The increase in capital reserves, as it’s sometimes called, is intended to slowdown lending. Lending is another way to drive up inflation.
However, the Bank of China issued a report that says increasing interest rates, and forcing banks to cut back on lending by increasing their capital reserves, is not having any immediate affect on inflation. That’s because Chinese banks went on a huge lending spree, which flooded the economy with so much money that it will take some time before inflation is brought under control.
In a previous report, it was estimated by a Chinese government audit, that local governments (just local governments) are now in debt by $1.65 trillion.
“People think jobs create wealth, they don’t, they don’t. It is being done by capital instruments [loans].”-Rodney Shakespeare, Trisakti University
A British economist with Trisakti University, in London, U.K., says ‘wealth’ is now actually created by big banks, and the big banks totally control the U.S.
The ‘wealth’ is created by the interest and fees the banks charge on their loans (capital instruments), and their money is fake: “The banks do not lend existing money. They create money out of nothing. They add administration costs and they add interest and then they lend it for anything. And that is where you’ve gone horribly wrong.”
The real money, the ‘wealth’, comes from individuals, governments and corporations paying back the loans the got from the big banks. Essentially the banks are making big money for themselves, from nothing (why else do they keep reporting huge profits in a bad economy).
Over the past few decades, big western banks have been gaining control by making as many people, governments and corporations addicted to living off of their loans. A tiny elite of people are benefiting: “Of course the banks and financial elites think this is a marvelous idea, because it effectually means that all the time they can ‘cream off’ what is essentially a ‘tax’…”
There are two answers Professor Shakespeare suggested; share the ‘wealth’ by spreading the benefits of capital instruments (bank loans) amongst the people, or: “…an uprising against what could be summarized as ‘banker occupation’. Until that happens there’s no chance of new thinking coming into being.”
I can only think of mass default on loans to be the most destructive way to rise up against “banker occupation”. This would involve not only individuals, but governments and corporations as well.
A group of concerned parents, not happy with government response, formed an organization called The Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation. They took urine samples from 10 kids, from elementary to high school age, and had a French company test them.
The result showed that all the kids are internally contaminated with cesium 134. An eight year old girl has 1.13 becquerels of cesium-134 per liter. The children live in Fukushima City, which is 60 kilometers (37 miles) from the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The Fukushima Network for Saving Children from Radiation says this is proof that radiation is continuing to be emitted by the damaged nuke plant, and it is spreading.
Nishiyama Hidehiko, spokesman for Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, has been removed from his job. It turns out that while the Japanese people were looking to the government for information on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Nishiyama was having an affair with a young woman.
A Japanese magazine broke the story. The woman said Nishiyama was worried about loosing his hair and thought “vigorous sex” would prevent it. He apologized for the media finding out about his affar, and said: “I am sorry if this gave any misperceptions or concerns that I have been laying down on the job.”
I think he should have said something other than “…laying down on the job”. Talk about ‘fiddling’ while Rome burns!
About 90 households have been told they need to leave, because of increasing radiation levels. The evacuation affects three districts in the city of Date. The city is 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.
The Japanese government is trying to minimize mass evacuations by testing each residential property when radiation levels near unsafe limits. The government explained the new evacuation determination to about 400 people in the affected districts. If a residential property is determined unsafe then the people living there will evacuate, the government promises to provide support to them.
Most of the people at the meeting basically said they think they should just mass evacuate all the families, after all what if you live in a house next to another house that’s just been evacuated, but you’re told you’re going to stay? The increasing, and spreading radiation levels shows that Fukushima Daiichi is still spewing radiation into the air.