Japan earthquake’s aftermath: Economists more pessimistic about long-term impact

“The sheer complexity of the damage makes it difficult to grasp the overall impact,” Barclays analysts Kyohei Morita and Yuichiro Nagai said, estimating that lost exports, lowered consumption and other impacts would raise the total cost of the earthquake and tsunami to around $210 billion.
Other ripple effects are starting to be felt around the world. General Motors, for example, said it would shut down a Shreveport, La., production line next week because of a shortage of parts from Japan, one of the world’s central supply hubs for the automobile and technology industries. Toyota said it was curbing overtime at its 13 North American plants to conserve its inventory of parts, cutting into U.S. incomes.
The financial system may also be at risk. With hundreds of thousands of people displaced by the natural disasters and the evacuations around the nuclear plant, “none of these people are going to be writing their mortgage checks today or paying off their credit card bills, business lines of credit, export lines of credit or car loans,” Carl Weinberg, chief economist for the High Frequency Economics consulting firm, wrote this week. “The banking sector could fail.”
The problems in Japan could also add to global inflation, sharpening the dilemma already faced in Europe and the United States over whether to raise interest rates to curb rising prices, even though that might crimp economic growth.

　世界の経済にも迷惑がかからないようにしたいなぁ。まずは復興ですが。