TEPCo said that Japan needs to prepare for rolling blackouts well into summer 2011.
The power shortage is a direct result of the nuclear disaster.
TEPCo is warning Japanese industries to make plans for the power shortage, such as reducing production.
The Walt Disney Co said its theme parks, Tokyo Disneyland and Tokyo DisneySea, will remain closed.
Disney blames the lack of a stable electricity supply and transportation issues. Also, liquefaction destroyed one of their parking lots.
Sony has announced that it will close 5 more plants, due to a lack of parts. That brings the number of Sony plants affected by the 9.0 quake/tsunami to 14.
Sony officials say they might be forced to move production away from Japan.
“If the shortage of parts and materials supplied to these plants continues, we will consider necessary measures, including a temporary shift of production overseas.”
As a result of the ongoing disaster in Japan, General Motors suspended all nonessential spending and global travel, a GM spokesman announced.
In addition, GM will suspend production in Spain, and cancel two shifts in Germany.
Even a small supplier of products that are fed to a bigger supplier that feeds the automaker’s assembly plants can delay or halt vehicle production.
Think of the “always a bigger fish” example, but in reverse. If there are no little fish to eat, what can the bigger fish do?
Honda is suspending May orders from U.S. Honda dealers.
Typically, dealers order cars six weeks in advance. Honda hopes to resume partial production in Japan by Wednesday, but doesn’t know when production will return to full capacity due to the developing nuclear disaster.
This will affect the availability of the Fit, CR-Z, Civic Hybrid, Insight, Acura TSX, Acura RL and a small number of CR-Vs.
General Motors (GM) has announced that due to auto parts shortages, caused by the disasters in Japan, they will have to shut down some production in the United States.
A GM plant in Louisiana is the first to be closed, for a week, as a result.
Toyota had announced that it would slow production in its U.S. factories. Officials say production will not be affected at their engine plants. Instead of closing plants altogether, Toyota has eliminated overtime work.
Ford says so far their U.S. operations are not affected, Honda said the same thing.
For a third day, the DOW fell big, along with other U.S. stock markets. Stock markets around the world being affected. This is because Japan has become the “parts” supplier to the global economy. Auto parts to electronic chips are made in Japan. This production has come to a virtual stand still. One analyst said that if this situation lasts a few weeks (best case) consumers can expect noticeable increases in prices.
It must be remembered that the Great Depression, that hit the United States in the 1930s, was not solely caused by the investment/finance crash of ’29. What put the U.S. into a Great Depression was the loss of its main industry at the time; agriculture. Because of the quake, tsunami, and now nuclear disaster, Japan has essentially lost its main industries.
Until the Second World War, agriculture was the biggest industry in the U.S. Most Americans worked in farming, or agriculture related jobs. The industry was hit by a disaster that was a combination of Mother Earth, and man made. The plain states, and mid west, had been dealing with a major drought, and, farming techniques destroyed the top soil. This is where the term “Dust Bowl” came from.
The result was that hundreds of thousands of Americans lost their jobs and their homes, just from the collapse of the agriculture industry. Combined with the losses of the finance/investment industries (which affected manufacturing) this created the Great Depression.
The World is already in a major financial crisis, bigger than what hit the world prior to the Great Depression in the U.S. (other countries, like Germany had already experience a depression). Now we have the natural/man made disasters that could push the World into a Great Depression.
Never before have the economies of the World been so tied together. We have a dominoes situation. Japan, being a major parts supplier, could be the dominoe that starts the fall.
Toyota announced that not only is it halting operations in Japan (due to the Fukushima disaster), but in the United States as well.
This is because most of the parts used in U.S. factories come from Japan, and parts production has come to a halt.