Courtesy of Zero Hedge
A choppy futures session has seen some modest profit-taking in line with Nikkei trading, following news that all TEPKO personnel around Fukushima are to be evacuated due to abnormally high radiation levels.
Phil: "Last I heard, they were rotating out the people who have been there today but I just got back and the news on TV here says they are evacuating. I don’t know if that’s a misinterpretation or if what we heard on the CC was a lie from the government but, as I said, it’s not really the government that is lying, it’s TEPCO. I don’t know who the hell they are getting to volunteer to go running back into that place, that’s for sure! … Now (1am) the news is saying the workers are back so it was the rotation we thought it was – shows you how fast misinformation spreads despite all the news coverage."
Keep an eye on the Japanese market for an indication of where we open tomorrow.A somewhat bigger problem is that according to Bloomberg, which has now caught up to our radiation reporting by prefecture, the radiation in Ibaraki has reached 15,800 nanosieverts/hour at 11:40 am, which is 300 times normal. The spin: this is one third the amount of radiation in a chest X-ray. What is not mentioned is that an X-ray is exposure measured in one instant, whereas in this case the irradiation goes on for hour, after hour, after hour. And some other unpleasant news: NTT DOCOMO has announced it will limit up to 80% of voice calls in neighboring Chiba and Ibaraki prefectures, and up to 50% in Tokyo. Whether this is to conserves some mystical telephonic energy or to prevent the spread of panic is unclear. As this latest news is digested watch for the drift.
This is how futures looked like at last check:
And here is a handy summary of the Japanese crisis so far from Reuters:
[click on image to enlarge]
