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Naturally this article in the New Republic is a platform to point the finger at something bigger. Not entirely wrong, but the US financial system has run amok, and part of the answer lies between the Hudson and the East River.

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The Japanese Ground Self Defense Force is getting to use its tanks in a radioactive operational environment. The results should be REALLY interesting for all of the world's armed forces.

japan nuclear crisis

George Monbiot's riting this in a Guardian blog is a guaranteed flame-magnet, but it is important that the debate around nclear power does not devolve into an environmentalist rout. Hard, hard questions have to be fully answered about HOW we move forward before we start pulling the plug on every single nuclear plant out there.

I have yet to see someone prove, using figures in BTUs, that renewables are the answer to the problem given current and projected generation capabilities. What this crisis should, and I think will do, is push funding of alternative energy research to the top of the priority list.

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The Guarddog offers a remarkably even-handed discussion of the events and makes some salient points, primarily that TEPCO's biggest error was not screaming for help much sooner. Never, never, let the guys appointed to run the business day-to-day handle a crisis of any magnitude. Get experts immediately.

All of Japan will pay the price of TEPCO's face.

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"The containment structures appear to be working, and the latest reactor designs aren't vulnerable to the coolant problem at issue here."

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"China's dairy industry was severely harmed by the melamine-tainted baby formula scandal in 2008, said an official in charge of food safety."

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"An ordinary American investor would probably not put money into a foreign electric car start-up suspected of openly copying competitors, let alone one whose franchised dealers occasionally put other companies' logos on its own vehicles."

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"

Despite the massive scale of their operations, only in recent years have the people who deliver disaster aid begun to benefit from the kind of data-driven decisionmaking and rigorous academic study that their commercial and military counterparts rely on. In the past decade, the responses to major disasters have been analyzed in hundreds of case studies and pored over by experts, their conclusions field-tested in subsequent crises where yet more data is collected. Learning the right lessons could not be more important: The stakes are literally life and death.
Photo: Q. Sakamaki

After the earthquake leveled Port-au-Prince, inhabitants scavenged what supplies they could from the rubble.
Photo: Q. Sakamaki

Today, more people than ever are vulnerable to natural disasters. Population growth and environmental degradation mean that the average number of people requiring help each year after storms, droughts, epidemics, and other natural catastrophes has skyrocketed in recent decades. More than a billion people now live within 62 miles of an ocean; an estimated 10 million are hit by floods every year. Thanks to global climate change, that number is expected to quintuple by 2080.

Earthquakes are an even more lethal threat, particularly in poor countries. Port-au-Prince and its environs collapsed because of the shoddy construction that is the norm in developing-world megalopolises from Mexico City to Chengdu. Haiti’s 7.0 temblor ranks among the deadliest ever recorded, on par with the quake-induced tsunami that struck Indian Ocean shorelines in 2004. Indeed, in the past 40 years, earthquakes and the tsunamis they spawn have killed more people than any other kind of natural disaster.

Aid agencies have ramped up apace. The number of emergency humanitarian workers worldwide has grown at a rate of 6 percent for the past 10 years, reaching a total of more than 210,000. In 2008, government and private donors gave $6.6 billion to international response efforts, nearly triple the 2000 total. It seems to be helping: Since 197

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"Showing resistance for the first time against government pressure to write off tens of billions worth of mortgage debt, Bank of America executives said on Tuesday that the idea was unworkable and warned that it would be unfair to borrowers who had managed to stay current on their loans. "

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"But the luxury market expanded in recent years to include new demographics, as surging home prices and easy access to cheap credit transformed ordinary people into the nouveau riche with an appetite for chic goods. Many used their homes as instant banking machines, tapping home equity loans to snap up clothes, handbags and shoes from the world's most prestigious labels. TV shows, such as Sex and the City, Project Runway and The Rachel Zoe Project added to the hype. "

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"And so, Christie goes on, forced to cut more than $1 billion in local aid in order to balance the budget, he asked the teachers not only to accept a pay freeze for a year but also to begin contributing 1.5 percent of their salaries toward health care. The dominant teachers’ union in the state responded by spending millions of dollars in television and radio ads to attack him."

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"Vallejo, a city about 25 miles north of San Francisco, offers a sneak preview of what could be the latest version of economic disaster. "

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The Next Wall Street Collapse

"Simon Johnson and James Kwak, 13 Bankers: The Wall Street Takeover and the Next Financial Meltdown. Vintage, $15.95 (paper).
Richard A. Posner, A Failure of Capitalism: The Crisis of ’08 and the Descent into Depression. Harvard University Press, $23.95 (cloth).
Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm, Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance. Penguin Press, $27.95 (cloth).
Joseph E. Stiglitz, Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy. W.W. Norton, $16.95 (paper)."

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The clash between Republicans and unions that caught fire in Wisconsin last week escalated Monday: Labor leaders planned to take their protests to dozens of other capitals and Democrats in a second state considered a walkout to stall bills that would limit union power.

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"Fellow Aliren:

As we have announced today, the B2B board of directors has accepted the resignations of B2B CEO David Wei and COO Elvis Lee. Additionally, former senior VP of B2B HR Kangming Deng has resigned his post as Chief People Officer of Alibaba Group in acceptance of responsibility and will be demoted to a different post."

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All we can do right now is hope that Jerry Brown can do a better job ending the deadlock in Sacramento and the deficit spending that comes as a result. If he can't, a constitutional convention is the state's last, best hope: Obama cannot afford to bail California out of our hole.

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"First Iceland. Then Greece. Now Ireland, which headed for bankruptcy with its own mysterious logic. In 2000, suddenly among the richest people in Europe, the Irish decided to buy their country—from one another. After which their banks and government really screwed them. So where’s the rage?"

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A compelling review of what is wrong with California.

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America truly has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to bookstores. Sadly, the bookstore is becoming a premium experience - for which one has to pay extra for the privilege of browsing.

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The consequences of fiscal irresponsibility

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