Wednesday, March 16, 2011

The World's crisis: Japan and the middle east

These are the trying times for most of the countries and the situation is deteriorating day by day. Economical, political and now natural forces are responsible to bring the World on its knees.

What started out from Egypt is now spreading to the other middle-east countries. Libya, Bahrain and now even Saudi Arabia are among the countries starting to initiate political revolution. With effects of globalization, problems of all these individual countries and the unrest they are producing is now the problem of the whole World and the resolution to these problems should be efficient enough to have the minimum impact. US along with other countries where the consumption of oil is ever increasing are getting impacted the most.

With oil problems in the background the quake of Japan and its related aftermaths are now producing the waves of nuclear catastrophe. The news coming out of Japan is not good, according to the Japanese media all the measure to contain nuclear radiations are failing, and now there are concerns with reactors 5 & 6 at the Fukushima power plant. It is very ironic that this year is the 25th anniversary of the tragic events of nuclear disaster of Chernobyl and now Japan is on the brink of another nuclear tragedy. The 40 year old nuclear reactors of the Fukushima power plant were designed by General Electric and were due to decommission this month end.

Japan is the 3rd largest economy of the World (US is 1st and China is 2nd) and with current nuclear threats looming over Japan the impacts of this disaster got compounded. Major stock indices lost over 1% (currently here in the US Dow Jones is down 1.5%) of their value and prediction is they will keep coming down till the nuclear crises in Japan is averted. Technology sector is among the hardest hit sectors as Japan is the among the primary suppliers to the electronic and automobile industry.

Japan has the history of facing such crisis (the crisis of Hiroshima & Nagasaki) and rising from the same, the only difference is todays World is well connected and this is what globalization is all about. What currently seems to be the problem of Japan is now the problem for the whole World and we all have to face it together.

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