Interesting, but not about silver. http://www.watoday.com.au/business/world-business/no-silver-lining-for Bastiat used the analogy of the broken window, and the spending that flows from it (that which is seen) to point out that which is unseen: How the money used to repair the window - government spending on fiscal stimulus - could have been spent more efficiently if the window hadn't been broken. Japan won't be better off - richer, as a nation - as a result of the rebuilding effort. Housing starts will increase, but the housing stock won't. The same goes for factories and office buildings. A nation isn't richer when it has to allocate scarce resources to rebuilding. Just think how the money could have been used, in ways only entrepreneurs can envision, rather than rebuild what was destroyed. Here's Bastiat again: "If, on the other hand, you come to the conclusion, as is too often the case, that it is a good thing to break windows, that it causes money to circulate, and that the encouragement of industry in general will be the result of it, you will oblige me to call out, 'Stop there! your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.'" One hundred and fifty years later, Keynesians are still flying blind.
Similar post on zerohedge: Sean Corrigan's Letter To All The "Idiots" Who Believe The Japanese Calamity Will "Prove Positive For GDP" All the sophist idiots (Corrigan's word not ours) in the media and the bleeding edge of financial lemmingdom who believe there could be no greater boon to global economy than the death and suffering of hundreds of thousands(you know who you are) are kindly requested to read the following missive from Diapason's Sean Corrigan who cleanly and clinically blows out this latest moronic piece of uber-false groupthink out of the water: "We cannot abstain from expressing our utter contempt for the many idiots who have already begun parroting the standard Keynesian nonsense that this calamity will ultimately 'prove positive for GDP', or that the rebuilding efforts can only redound to the nation's well-being to the extent that they shake it out of its ongoing 'deflation'... If the awful spectacle of vast swathes of land littered with shattered buildings and crumpled vehiclesor the concern that they suffer the invisible hazards of radioactive contaminationoffers such grand opportunities for advancement, why stop there? Why wait for the vagaries of the climate, or the tortured creaking of continental plates to bring about such a 'stimulus' to growth? Why not declare war on ourselves and unleash our titanic arsenals of destruction on our own towns and cities, and rain down hellfire upon our own farms and gardens, razing the first to the ground and sowing the last with salt, until we make a self-inflicted Carthage of them, one in whose midst we can hope to become rapidly richer than our neighbours as, shivering and starving, we pick our way among the debris of our former civilisation to the nearest construction site? This is all such arrant nonsense that you should banish from your consideration, henceforth and forever, all of the jejune scribblings of the fool whom you once catch propounding it!
Don't you just love it when the men and women of sense, reason and logic just lose it in a public forum like this? Call me saddistic, but I find this all very funny indeed.
It may not stimulate their economy, but wont it help ours as they need to buy the materials to rebuild all those wooden houses somewhere?
Yes, there will be a lot of money changing hands but nothing new will be produced. So the world economy will not gain. They lost a lot of capital assets that will take years to replace just to get back to where they were 2 weeks ago.
If anyone can cope with this, it's the Japanese. You just have to see how composed they are. If even 1/10th of that disaster happened here we'd be creating more havock than the disaster itself.
Exactly... Go spend some time in their cities... massive cities... no body litters, everyone is super polite... you actually get on the bus through the rear doors, and pay when you get off at the front. SO many of their societal systems simply would not work in Australia because we would lie n cheat n break them. It can only be seen to be believed.
No, everything will be superior, more efficient and better in every way. There will be wind turbines and solar panels on every house and business. If the clean, safe and cheap power station just up the road doesn't make the area uninhabitable for the next 5000 years, this newly rebuilt region will be a step into the future for a more sustainable way of life. Either that, or Goldman Sachs will step in, rob everyone blind, and generally make everyones lives miserable for decades.
One story I saw a Gaijin leapt into a taxi to escape the Tsunami which was within sight of them. The bloke said he had to yell at the taxi driver to get him to break the speed limit and to ignore the stop signs. They made it.
There are probably valid arguments to the rebuilding being rejuvenatory. It applies only to specific things, but where the rebuilding replaces old, outdated things then the future certainly can be brighter. If newer communication cables and technology comes in etc. it may increase efficiencies and output in the future. It may also break the back of any stagnant processes. Japan is one of the greatest welfare states on earth. More people are being robbed to pay others. If a disruption occurs to that, then there can certainly be gains. Also, while depopulation in itself is not always good, the tsunami may have, on balance wiped out more of the weak and infirm leading to a younger generation left to rebuild and take over. The seen, and unseen are not always obvious.
