Will this disaster be the last straw?

Immediate thoughts:

1) Depending on how much of the nuclear industry was affected, this could result in the need for more imported oil, putting more pressure on global prices.

2) If the yen collapses, it can’t be good news for either Europe or us, as the article points out.

3) This is good news for Korea and Taiwan, and even China, who will pick up a lot of the manufacturing slack at least in the near term.

4) Expect to hear a lot of ignorance about how this is the best thing that could have happened to the Japanese economy, with all the jobs that will be created rebuilding, and comparisons to how they recovered from much worse devastation after the war. This will be a display of the broken window fallacy, and it will be ignoring the fact that the resources necessary for that renaissance (which took decades) came from the US. Any time wealth is destroyed (see “cash for clunkers”), the world is worse off, even if localities benefit.

[Sunday morning update]

The financial impact: five things to watch.

…in ObamaCare:

Today former Congressman Ernest Istook testified before the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee about the $105 billion slush fund in advance appropriations liberals tucked inside Obamacare. The $105 billion bypasses the traditional yearly budgeting process and is spread throughout the 2,700 page legislation. It took the Congressional Research Service (CRS) seven months to identify all the disparate funds and it was not until February (11 months after the bill passed) that all of the funds could be totaled up.

Well, Queen Nancy told us we’d have to pass the bill to find out what was in it. This one only took a little less than a year.

It looks kind of unseverable to me, too.

I’d add that anyone who knew about this and voted for it is either ignorant of the Constitution, or indifferent to it, or both. I’d bet on both in most cases, but if the latter, it’s a violation of their oath of office.