Facts of the week

Consumer demand, Economic growth, Financial Events, Leverage
By Paul Hodges on 28-Mar-2011

The Financial Times reports two interesting facts:

• Japan’s leading seismologist warned Tokyo Electric Power in June 2009 that “tsunamis of a completely different scale have come before” in the region of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. One, in 869, had “destroyed a castle“. But no changes were made to the plant’s defences.
• The US has now spent ~$5trn on stimulus programmes and the Federal Reserve’s two ‘quantitative easing’ programmes. Yet the “economy has grown just 4%, $600bn, versus its trough in mid-2009“. This means it “got about 12c in growth for every dollar” spent. And the $5trn still needs to be repaid out of future growth.