Fuji time bomb

Japanese scientists predict Mt. Fuji will blow due to new tectonic pressures that are higher than when the volcano last erupted more than 300 years ago. Estimates say the eruption will affect more than 400,000 people and cost over $30 billion.

The National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Prevention has issued a warning that Japan’s 9.0 magnitude undersea quake last year, plus an aftershock four days later near Mt. Fuji, has created large pressure on the volcano’s magma chamber, which could lead to an eruption.

Mt. Fuji has already been classified as an active volcano, but scientists revealed new readings that show that the current pressure is at 1.6 megapascals, nearly 16 times higher than that required to trigger an eruption (0.1 megapascals).

It is "not a small figure", Kyodo News quotes lead volcanologist on the case as saying.

However, no signs of an eruption have so far been detected.

Nevertheless, “it’s possible for Mt. Fuji to erupt even several years after the 2011 earthquake, therefore we need to be careful about the development,” a team researcher stated.
Predicted damage

Japan’s tallest mountain and national symbol poses a high risk to its own population.

In 2004, the government estimated a Fuji eruption would affect more than 400,000 people around the Tokyo area and cost $31.25 billion in damages. Further, volcanic dust from Mt. Fuji is said be likely to travel more than 100 km and be able to reach Tokyo, which could lead to the national capital losing its ability to function for several months, Wired Magazine reports.

Prefectures that could potentially be affected, such as Kanagawa, Yamanashi and Shizuoka (all in between Mt. Fuji and Tokyo), are planning to test run an evacuation by 2014 and local governments will prepare shelter plans by April 2013.

Newly-detected pressure is not the only thing that could trigger an eruption. Researchers published evidence in May that Mt. Fuji might even collapse if a newly-discovered fault-line underneath it were to shift. This could be triggered by various factors, including slight tremors in the surrounding area.

Fuji’s last recorded eruption was in 1707, which lasted for just over two weeks and formed a new crater and a second peak halfway down the side of the mountain. Fuji emitted 800 million cubic meters of volcanic ash, which spread over vast areas, even reaching the ancient capital of Edo, almost 100 km away.

Many people lost their lives from starvation after the eruption since they could not obtain food from their lands or move elsewhere because of damages caused by the volcano, stated Naomichi Miyaji from Nihon University.

RT

Draghi Announces Weapon of Mass Enslavement

Disastrous job report will lead to QE3?

Spain's Capital Flight Now Worse Than Asian Financial Crisis

The flight of capital from Spain is now worse than what Indonesia, one of the hardest hit countries during the Asian financial crisis, experienced in the late 1990s, according to analysis by Nomura.

On a three-month rolling basis, portfolio and investment outflows from Spain totaled 52.3 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), (that's) more than double the outflows from Indonesia, which reached 23 percent of GDP at the time of the Asian crisis, Jens Nordvig, global head of G10 FX strategy at Nomura wrote in a note to clients on Tuesday.

Spaniards and foreign investors have been pulling money out of Spanish banks as the economy has worsened in recent months, and Nordvig said without the single currency and the flows from the ECB, Spain would already be going through a major currency crisis. (Read More: Depression, Suicides Rise as Euro Debt Crisis Intensifies)

We would stress that the broad-based nature of the capital flight, which involves both banking claims and securities and flows from both residents and non-residents, makes for a rather extreme overall outflow, and one that raises serious concerns about the implications for banking sector stability and economic growth,” Nordvig wrote.

According to Nomura, there are plenty of explanations for this, including the fact that the Spanish economy is more leveraged than Indonesia’s and the currency union allows very large capital movements to take place.

Data from the Bank of Spain, which Nomura highlighted, showed foreigners were large sellers of Spanish securities in the latest quarter, which generated an outflow of 19.4 percent of GDP. There was also a large outflow from Spanish residents accumulating foreign bank claims. In the latest quarter, the outflow from this source was 16.7 percent of GDP.

Spain is now front and center in the latest round of the euro zone debt crisis but the Spanish government has so far resisted asking for a bailout from the European Union and other international creditors, except for the aid already agreed to for its banking sector. (Read More: Spain Faces Post-Holiday Detox as Time Runs Out)

But Nomura’s economics team believes that Spain won’t be able to avoid a full-blown bailout, which would include a more active role of the ECB in the Spanish bond market.

“The scale of capital flight that took place over the last few months in Spain supports this view,” Nordvig said.

Italy and Spain Diverge

The capital outflows also show that Spain’s fortunes seem to be worsening much faster than those of Italy, a country with a much higher debt-to-GDP ratio.

“In Italy's case, both portfolio outflows and other investment outflows represent a touch more than 5 percent of GDP. For Spain, both sources of outflows are much larger; about 20 percent of GDP in the case of portfolio outflows and about 30 percent in the case of other investment outflows,” Nordvig said.

Nordvig also pointed out that while bank deposits had fallen at Spanish banks, they had remained quite stable at Italian banks.

CNBC

New Russian ICBM can Carry bigger warhead

Russia’s new heavy intercontinental ballistic missile will have a 5-ton warhead, which is four times that of its predecessors, a former military commander said on Friday.

“The new ICBM will have a payload four times bigger than that of the Yars missile,” said Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin (Ret.), advisor to the Russian Strategic Missile Forces (SMF) commander, who served as SMF chief of staff in 1991-93.

“The 45-ton Yars has a payload of 1.2 tons. The new missile will be able to orbit a payload of 5 tons.”

The new missile will have a greater capability for missile defense penetration, he said.




R-36M2 Voyevoda ICBM

SMF chief Col. Gen. Sergei Karakayev said this past Monday that Russia will build a new ICBM by 2018. The new missile is to replace the R-36M2 Voyevoda (NATO reporting name SS-18 Satan) missile.

So far all of Russia’s recent ICBM projects, both sea-launched (Bulava) and ground-based (Topol-M, Yars), have been solid fuel.



RIA Novosti.

Topol-M ballistic missile

Karakayev said the new ICBM will have a launch mass of around 100 tons with a better payload-launch weight ratio than in a solid fuel missile.

Such ICBMs can only be deployed in silos.

The Russian Defense Ministry previously said that unless the United States abandons its plans to create a missile defense system in Europe, Russia will take counter measures, including building a new heavy liquid-propellant missile.

RIA Novosti

25,792,000 Unemployed And Underemployed

Sadly for the US labor force, today's number of reported unemployed people according to the Household Survey, which came at 12,544,000, or a drop from 12,794,000 (even as the number of employed declined as well from 142.2MM to 142.1MM), tells only half the story. 

As the following chart of the day, a bigger problem comes from the fact that in August another 8 million Americans were working part time, double what it was at the start of the Depression. 

Additionally, 5.2 million, also double the number 4 years ago, are marginally attached to the labor force. Combined, this adds up to 25.8 million, which is the real number of interest, even ignoring the nearly 400,000 who mysteriously dropped out of the labor force. 

As Bloomberg concludes, "It is likely firms have altered their hiring behavior following the recession, which has resulted in a low-wage bias that favors part-time and temporary workers." Sadly, this means that the change in the labor market is now secular, and the Fed will have to reassess everything it knows, just as it had to reevaluate its flawed understanding of Stock vs Flow, and why more and more are now calling for endless QE.

Federal judge awarded the U.S. government ownership of gold coins

A federal judge awarded the U.S. government ownership of 10 rare gold coins valued at roughly $80 million that have been missing for decades.
The 1933 Saint-Gaudens double eagle, named after its designer Augustus St. Gaudens, is "one of the most sought-after rarities in history," according to the U.S. Mint.

Though the double eagle was originally valued at $20, one such coin that belonged to King Farouk of Egypt sold for more than $7.5 million at a Sotheby's auction in the summer of 2002, making it the most valuable coins ever auctioned at the time.

The Philadelphia Mint struck 445,500 double eagles at the height of the Great Depression, but it pulled them back weeks later as President Theodore Roosevelt ordered U.S. banks to abandon the gold standard.
With most 1933 double eagles having been melted into gold bars, the Smithsonian was thought to have the only two coins left in existence.
It was eventually discovered, however, that Philadelphia Mint cashier George McCann spirited some away to local coin dealer Israel Switt.
In 2003, Switt's daughter and two grandsons - Joan, Roy and David Langbord - drilled open a safety deposit box. Inside that box, nestled among Switt's belongings, sat a gray paper Wanamaker's department store bag.
That bag contained 10 of the 1933 double eagles, wrapped in tissue paper.
After the Langbords handed over the coins to the Mint for authentication, the government seized the coins and stashed them in a vault at Fort Knox without compensating the family.

In July 2011, the Langbords tried to convince a federal jury that the coins could have escaped the Mint legitimately through a "window of opportunity" between March 15 and April 5, 1933.

The government's star expert, David Tripp, acknowledged gold coins could have left the Mint during that window, but he added that there were no records that 1933 Double Eagles did.

Jurors found that the coins were forfeited to the government, and U.S. District Judge Legrome Davis Jr. refused to disturb the verdict Wednesday.
"In the end, Tripp admitted on cross examination that there was a small 'window of opportunity' during which gold coin was authorized to be released from the Philadelphia Mint," Davis wrote. "And many gold coins did, in fact, leave the Mint during this period of time. ... But as Tripp correctly noted, the Mint records reflect that no 1933 Double Eagles were part of those transactions."
Nobody witnessed the disappearance of the 10 coins, but the jury "could - and did - properly infer criminal intent," he added.

"Not surprisingly, the jury in this case heard no testimony from anyone who was actually present at the Mint when the '33 Double Eagles first disappeared so many years ago - all the primary actors who might have told that tale have passed away," the 54-page order states. "But that certainly does not doom the Government's case because 'explicit evidence is not required to support a finding of specific intent.'"

Absent records surrounding the '33 Double Eagles speak to criminal intent.
"The Mint meticulously tracked the '33 Double Eagles, and the records show that no such transaction occurred," Davis wrote. "What's more, this absence of a paper trail speaks to criminal intent. If whoever took or exchanged the coins thought he was doing no wrong, we would expect to see some sort of documentation reflecting the transaction, especially considering how carefully and methodically the Mint accounted for the '33 Double Eagles. The jury saw no record of a legitimate '33 Double Eagle release, and from this lack of documentation one may reasonably infer that the responsible party appropriated the coins in secret, knowing full well the wrongfulness and illegality of his actions. 
Courthouse News Service