TOKYO: - Japan counted the financial cost on Monday of its worst catastrophe since World War Two as the economy shuddered, prompting the central bank to line up a record $183 billion in funds to stabilize the banking system.
Markets swooned at the shock of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami that may have killed more than 10,000 and has left millions of people without power, water or homes.
If that was not enough, engineers were battling to prevent a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi complex owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), where three reactors were threatening to overheat in the worst atomic power accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
The insurance cost of the quake, which hammered the northeast coastline, could reach $35 billion even before the tsunami is accounted for, said risk modeling company AIR Worldwide. That is nearly as much as the entire worldwide catastrophe loss for the global insurance industry in 2010.
A swathe of top-name Japanese manufacturers, including Sony Corp, Toyota Motor Co and Panasonic have shuttered production lines, with restart efforts hampered by quake aftershocks.
About a fifth of the country's nuclear power generation capacity has been shut down by the disaster. Thermal plants also shutdown, forcing the world's third-biggest economy to instigate rolling blackouts to conserve energy.
"The economic consequences appear to be greater that we perhaps originally expected," said Tom Byrne, senior vice president at Moody's Investor Service.
Indeed, economists said that the triple blow of quake, tsunami and nuclear accident is set to damage the already struggling economy harder and longer that initially expected.
Markets swooned at the shock of an 8.9 magnitude earthquake and a tsunami that may have killed more than 10,000 and has left millions of people without power, water or homes.
If that was not enough, engineers were battling to prevent a nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi complex owned by Tokyo Electric Power Co (TEPCO), where three reactors were threatening to overheat in the worst atomic power accident since Chernobyl in 1986.
The insurance cost of the quake, which hammered the northeast coastline, could reach $35 billion even before the tsunami is accounted for, said risk modeling company AIR Worldwide. That is nearly as much as the entire worldwide catastrophe loss for the global insurance industry in 2010.
A swathe of top-name Japanese manufacturers, including Sony Corp, Toyota Motor Co and Panasonic have shuttered production lines, with restart efforts hampered by quake aftershocks.
About a fifth of the country's nuclear power generation capacity has been shut down by the disaster. Thermal plants also shutdown, forcing the world's third-biggest economy to instigate rolling blackouts to conserve energy.
"The economic consequences appear to be greater that we perhaps originally expected," said Tom Byrne, senior vice president at Moody's Investor Service.
Indeed, economists said that the triple blow of quake, tsunami and nuclear accident is set to damage the already struggling economy harder and longer that initially expected.
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