Japan

While US stock futures continue doing their own thing, primarily on the back of JPMorgan's $20 billion financing for AT&T to buy T-Mobile (gotta love proximity to the discount window and/or excess reserves), with ES surging by 16 points overnight (but not Sprint - sorry guys, you are on your own) after the world apparently did not end, the black swan formation refuses to disperse. Here is the latest news update from Japan, Libya, and Yemen.

The next shoe drops as Japan realizes that what radionuclides go up, they typically come down, even despite a relatively short half life (and say goodbye to sushi unless one has a penchant for 15 eyed albacore). Bloomberg reports that "Radiation was detected in water in Tokyo and the prefectures of Tochigi, Gunma, Saitama, Chiba and Niigata, Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology said today in a faxed statement." But since nobody has any reason to doubt what the Japanese government says, here is the dislaimed: "Samples of tap water taken yesterday in Tokyo and five nearby
prefectures showed traces of radiation that were within acceptable
levels, the Japanese government said." And with the radioactive cloud about to loop back and hit Japan head on, things are about to get far worse, but in the meantime those living in Tochigi Prefectuve are advised to not drink the water: "Tochigi Prefecture’s reading of radioactive iodine-131 was 77 Becquerel per kilogram, the highest among the prefectures, while the level of iodine found in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district was 1.5. All the numbers were within the 300 Bq/kg limit, the ministry said." In the meantime the "Under Survey" farce continues: "Readings couldn’t be taken in Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures because of disruption of water supply following the magnitude 9 earthquake that struck Japan on March 11, while Fukushima Prefecture takes its own readings, the statement said." But as long as people are indoors, and preferrably under their desk, when they drink radioactive water, all should be well, yes? Something tells us this total and utter bullshit, will lead to at least one more TEPCO executive profuse crying bout in front of the cameras within 48 hours.

Below is the most recent summary update from Reuters on the Japanese crisis. The one topic that everyone is following, however, namely whether some cable is attached to some cooling installation that probably blew up on Monday or Tuesday, gets the proper treatment: i.e., in the span of 4 minutes Reuters reports two completely conflicting stories. Looks like we will be seeing more crocodile tears from TEPCO executives in the next few days.

• From 10:52 pm ET -  Engineers have yet to attach a cable to Japan's quake-stricken reactors but hope to be successful either on Saturday or Sunday, the plant operator said.
• From 10:54 pm ET - Engineers successfully attach a power cable to the outside of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear station in a first step to help cool reactors and stop the spread of radiation.

Credible stuff.

"Sick on my journey, only my dreams will wander these desolate moors." (Matsuo Basho's death poem)

Following now pervaseive allegations of a massive Fukushima accident cover up by the Japanese government including non-disclosure of real radioactive levels, the Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan said on Friday that the government has been dislosing all the information it has on the accident at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant according to Reuters. "We have been honestly saying that the situation with the nuclear plant accident remains very serious," he said in a televised address to the Japanese people marking one week since a devastating earthquake and tsunami struck northeast Japan. At this point we are willing to believe him: judging by the increasingly improvised Japanese response to the catastrophe nobody has any idea what is really going on or how to handle it properly. Which is why very expect to hear increasingly more about the "Chernobyl solution" - or the shotgun "resolution" of the problem by literally burying it in sand. From Reuters: "A "Chernobyl solution" may be the last resort for dealing with Japan's stricken nuclear plant, but burying it in sand and concrete is a messy fix that might leave part of the country as an off-limits radioactive sore for decades. Japanese authorities say it is still too early to talk about long-term measures while cooling the plant's six reactors and associated fuel-storage pools, comes first. "It is not impossible to encase the reactors in
concrete, but our priority right now is to try and cool them down
first," a Tokyo Electric Power official told a briefing on Friday." Alas if and when the plan to restore power to blown up cooling plants (has anyone actually seen the before and after pics of the reactor) fails, this will be the only option.

As was perfectly expected by Zero Hedge, Japan is issuing its first batch of Earthquake relief debt to the tune of ¥10 Trillion. And with massive repatriation flows (as confirmed today when Steve Liesman denied the very concept), and little demand out of domestic purchasers, Japan is about to (re)discover the pleasures of massive quantitative easing.

The glorious president who has taken some time off from his extremely busy schedule, is addressing the nation over the latest developments in Japan. He is not taking any questions for the obvious reason that answers are still "under survey." Watch the prepared remarks being delivered live here.

Earlier today we received an email from one of our readers aboard the aircraft carrier group off Japan performing evacuation efforts for US citizens in Japan, that it had turned around and is now going back. While we are trying to validate this, we have just noticed breaking news from Sky News that US and UK search teams are pulling out of Japan tomorrow. We were wondering what may have brought about this (so far unconfirmed) evacuation of the evacuators until we saw the next breaking news from Sky News: "Japan Admits Nuclear Problem Is 'Severe'" - "This is a severe incident that is occurring right now," the spokesman said at a news conference. "We have vented and used seawater as cooling, followed the accident management plan but this is a very severe operation." The admission comes as plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco) continues attempts to stop the six-reactor Fukushima 1 complex from going into nuclear meltdown. "We have to keep cooling the fuel so it doesn't reach criticality," the Tepco spokesman said, adding that radiation levels have barely fallen at the site." Translation: if operation "Irrigation" fails, TEPCO itself confirms the chance of a critical reaction in the nuclear fuel is very high. Which of course would explain why everyone who knows more than the average peasant who just watches manipulated media, is getting the hell out of dodge.

According to sources, a Japanese Ministry of Finance official has said that it is now ready for a "Bettle on the Yen." Just headlines for now. Much more will be revealed later when the G-7 meets to discuss how to further weaken the currency in a coordinated effort. An immediate pop in the USDJPY above 79 follow this statement. The fact that we are getting nothing but posturing from the BOJ instead of actual intervention, such as we saw last when the USDJPY hit 80.30 in late October continues to be quite troubling. In the meantime, the NZDUSD, another funding pair has been taking on some water in early trading.

MSNBC presents an immersive 360 panorama view from the middle of the Japanese earthquake devastation. As usual, a picture is worth a thousand explanatory columns.

The latest summary update of all the latest development in and around the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant (bold is recent).

While Japan has been closely guarding radiation data particularly in the most impacted Fukushima region very closely, Zero Hedge has procured a fallout map showing radiation levels in the immediate NPP vicinity. To our surprise, despite Northwesterly winds (i.e., those blowing from that direction), the bulk of the fallout is concentrated precisely in that direction with a reading area 30 km NorthWest (see Reading Point 21 on the map below) of the plant showing reading of up to 80 microsieverts. What is perplexing is that the readings by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), unfortunately just two of them, differ from the official ones Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) substantially. The materially higher readings reported by JAEA are notable outliers despite readings in a proximal region by MEXT indicating substantially lower readings. Is the Ministry of Truth now directly experiments with the radioactive tolerance of people by cutting the odd zero here and there?

Right now there is a mass exodus out of the city of Tokyo. But not everyone can leave the city. There are over 30 million people living in and around Tokyo. So where in the world could you possibly put 30 million refugees?

Chernobyl was attempted to be covered up 100% at the beginning, even though eventually 600,000 people used as "liquidators" were eventually brought in to cleanup, the first 200,000 were exposed to heavy radiation. Some pictures (still in my mind from 1986) showed workers in normal street clothes shovelling radioactive materials into wheelbarrows. Tokyo Electric Power tried to cover up their problems at the start, the Prime Minister was reportedly extremely mad when they finally fessed up a little bit 3 hours after it had already become a real problem.

Mizuho, the second-largest financial services company in Japan, has just locked out its customers from accessing their cash. Whether or not this is related to Zero Hedge reports from yesterday that the same bank is unable to complete ¥570 billion in transactions in unclear. What is clear is that we can only hope that those who need cash are calm and collected enough not to start a physical run on whatever bank deposit branches are open. From Reuters: "Mizuho Bank said on Thursday that all of its automatic teller machines (ATM) throughout Japan have stopped working. The bank did not immediately give a reason for the outage." One can only hope that the most recent ¥5 trillion injection was sufficient to keep the liquidity in the banking system online. Alas, should the Mizuho situation not be promptly fixed, we anticipate more injections from the BOJ before the night is out.