The U.S. Congressional Budget Office projects slow growth and high unemployment for years to come.
GDP will remain stagnant for several years. The CBO predicts 2.3% for 2011, 2.7% for 2012. Official unemployment numbers will remain above 8% until 2014!
The Non-Life Insurance Rating Organization of Japan said insurance companies gained more than 2.51 million new earthquake contracts, since the 11 March 2011 megadisaster.
Not surprisingly the biggest gains were in the areas hardest hit: Fukushima Prefecture saw a 49.6% increase. Iwate Prefecture 26.4% increase. Miyagi Prefecture up 22.3%.
The Japanese government is about to vote on a standardized decontamination plan.
Here’s a list of suggested decontamination procedures for cities and towns:
High pressure washing of homes and buildings, including rain gutters.
Trimming of outer leaves and branches on bushes and trees.
Pulling up smaller plants and removal of top soil.
Washing roads, including flushing joints on asphalt and concrete roads, removing mud and dirt along roadsides.
All removed soil and plant material must be treated as nuclear waste.
The Japanese government will vote on a standardized plan on 26 August 2011. The amazing thing is that it’s been more than five months since the start of the ongoing nuclear disaster, and they’re just now coming up with a standardized national government decontamination plan.
The North Anna nuclear power plant, outside Richmond, Virginia, has shut down.
The plant is on the coastline, just seven miles from the epicenter of the 5.9 quake (earlier reports said it was 5.8).
Diesel generators are supplying power to basic systems at the plant.
Nine nuke plants from New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania to Maryland have declared unusual events. They have not shut down.
Gaopeng.com, the Chinese arm of U.S. based Groupon Incorporated, has been laying off Chinese workers on a weekly basis, and has threatened current employees if they reveal the lay offs.
Many current and former employees are revealing the lay offs through social media.
One micro blog, called Gaopeng Will Fail (loose English translation), said the U.S. owned company started laying workers off last month, but made it official on August 19. They also ordered employees not to talk about it.
At least 30% of Gaopeng employees, and contract workers, will lose their jobs.
Ouyang Yun, Gaopeng’s chief operating officer, said that the company is just “…experiencing a reshuffling of personnel and only dismissed (employees) for poor performance.”
However, business analysts say Gaopeng can not blame employees, Gaopeng itself is a poor performer: “Backed by Groupon, Tencent and other venture capitals, Gaopeng should not be running low on cash. So its shrinking profitability indicates it needs more innovative ways to lure clients.”-Chen Shousong, Analysys International
U.S. citizen Hunter Levan, 29, came to China in 2009. Initially it was to learn Chinese: “I realized if I ever wanted to learn Chinese, I would have to move here and ‘do as the Romans do’.”
But after learning the language, Levan realized it was a good place to find a job: “I sent out e-mails and resumes in Chinese, and got feedback in less than five days.” He now works as a consultant for Spring Airlines in Shanghai.
Alison Watts, 28, knew little about China: “But all my friends who have been here said it was incredibly fantastic, so I decided to take the big step forward.”
Watts’ experiences with journalism got her a job hosting an English-language TV show in Shanghai. She says “…amazing opportunities keep popping up.”
Ted Hornbein, a U.S. businessman, has worked in China since the early 1990s. Now he’s a board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. He says a lot has changed since the 1990s: “Today you have local and Western restaurants and your whole family here with you…I have seen a 180-degree shift from my first July 4 party in China.”
In January 2011, CNN asked the U.S. Department of State how many U.S. citizens were leaving for jobs in China. The official response was that it was difficult to know because U.S. citizens are not required to tell the state department about living and working in China.
However, international employment agencies say they’ve seen a big jump in U.S. workers going to China for jobs, ever since 2007.
The Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business at Indiana University, says Shanghai and Beijing are the big hot spots for U.S. workers, but in the past couple of years other regions of China are opening up.
Seems like China is doing more to find jobs for U.S. citizens, than the U.S. government is doing here in the United States!
When orders were finally given to evacuate areas around Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, government officials led people to believe it would only be a few months.
It’s more than five months, and now the government realizes the level of contamination is so bad that it will be “…a long, long time…” before some city and towns can be considered safe for people to live in.
A meeting is being arraigned with local officials to explain the severity of the situation, and to better explain to evacuees why they might never be able to return home.
The day after the Japanese government announced it was lifting the contaminated cattle ban on Fukushima cows, four cows tested for cesium levels above safe limits.
Then, the very next day five more cows showed up with cesium contamination.
The contaminated cows had already been shipped to a slaughter house in Yokohama. It was there that the beef was found to be highly contaminated.
To make matters worse, the cow farmers swear they were not feeding the cows local rice hay, but more expensive imported hay. The imported hay had been stored indoors.
This means that the cows could be getting contaminated on their way to the slaughter house. Officials are trying to figure it out.
And yes, the Japanese government suspended the lifting of the contaminated cattle ban.
Afghan officials have told British media that the U.S. and Afghanistan have agreed to keep thousands of U.S. troops in country until 2024!
The deal would allow U.S. forces to use Afghan military bases, provide facilities to store massive numbers of U.S. military equipment, and allow thousands of military personnel to stay, including special forces.
Russian officials pointed out that the deal doesn’t make sense: “If the job is done, if terrorism is defeated and peace and stability is brought back, then why would you need bases? If the job is not done, then several thousand troops, even special forces, will not be able to do the job that 150,000 troops couldn’t do. It is not possible.”-Andrey Avetisyan, Russian Ambassador to Afghanistan
The Russians should know, they got their butts kicked by the Afghans back when Russia was part of the Soviet Union. They did exactly what the U.S. is doing now, trying to train up the Afghan government to take on the “terrorists”. The Soviet Union left Afghanistan in 1989, but continued to supply weapons and trainers to the Afghan government. The Afghan government lasted until 1992, brought down by a civil war that lasted until 1996. The civil war ended in 1996 when the Taliban took control of the country.
“The U.S. economy needs to grow 2.5% to 3% per year to add jobs fast enough to keep the unemployment rate stable. This will not happen soon.”-Mark Zandi, Moody’s Analytics
Moody’s Analytics downgraded projected GDP for the Untied States. One month ago they projected GDP to be at a yearly average of 3.5%, for the rest of 2011. Now they say the U.S. will be lucky if it can hit 2%.
Moody’s also says the chance of an official double dip recession is now 1 in 3. They also said every 100 point drop in the Dow Jones increases the chances of a double dip recession.
They pointed out that the current job creation rate in the United States falls way short of employment goals for 2012: “Employers will have added about 1.25 million jobs between the fourth quarters of 2010 and 2011, and 2 million more by the fourth quarter of 2012. By then, U.S. employment will still total some 1 million less than expected.”–Mark Zandi (keep in mind he’s talking about projected job creation, there could be more jobs created, or less)