Wall Street and the Earthquake

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Wall Street and the Earthquake"


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Doug Merrill argues that last week’s earthquake in Japan shouldn’t spark any serious global economic problems. Why?


Because Tokyo Earthquake is probably the most widely used wildcard in any sort of future/scenario planning. Sure, it was a low-probability event at any given time, but over longer terms it


had a non-trivial likelihood of coming to pass. From financial markets to supply-chain managers, they all should have a file at hand marked Tokyo Earthquake, and the work — for people far


away — now involves dealing with how reality diverges from what was planned. Maybe some international actors will be exposed as having neglected to answer this most obvious of what-ifs, but


most will have worked through the possibilities.


Roughly speaking, I’ll buy this. On the other hand, my confidence in the ability of global financial actors to properly identify and plan for big but low-probability catastrophes has been


pretty shaken over the past couple of years. I mean, how surprised would you be if it turned out that a bunch of big financial players, weakened by the 2008 collapse, knew perfectly well


that “Tokyo Earthquake” would put them out of business but just decided to cross their fingers and hope it didn’t happen for a while?


In my case, not very. Still, as Doug says, this is the kind of catastrophe that insurance companies really do know how to account for, so he’s most likely right.


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“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends


to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things they don’t like—which is most things that are true.


No one gets to tell Mother Jones what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes


to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real


difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.


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The essential ingredient that makes this possible? Readers like you. Please stand with Mother Jones and make a donation today. These are dangerous times, and we’ve got a lot of hard,


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