Guardian:
In Europe Japan's crisis is already having an impact. Angela Merkel has ordered a temporary shutdown of Germany's pre-1980s nuclear stations, which according to estimates account for 7% of the country's power. That is a significant energy loss for a country that is growing robustly.
The second factor is the impact the Sendai earthquake will have on consumer and business confidence. At present the global economy is characterised by a high degree of uncertainty, over the situation in north Africa and the Middle East and now over Japan. Economists think they have a way of quantifying this uncertainty, but they don't.
The complexity of global supply chains for the goods in which Japan is world leader could mean delays and disruptions in some sectors, – such as consumer electronics and cars – depending on how badly the major Japanese multinationals are affected by shortages of power and materials.
So estimates that Japan's crisis will shave perhaps 0.1% or 0.2% off global growth this year, with a similar rebound in 2012, are little more than guesswork. It could be a lot worse than that.
TIME's Curious Capitalist blog isn't too worried:
[T]here is little reason to believe the troubles in Japan's economy will have a very dramatic impact on the rest of the world. Clearly, industrial output and demand in Japan will take a hit, and so will growth. But that won't translate into big losses for the global economy, even in its current fragile condition. There are two reasons why. First, though Japan is a big economy, it exports more than it imports, thus a decrease in demand in Japan doesn't spill over much into the global economy. Only 5% of U.S. exports head to Japan, for example. Morgan Stanley points out that Japan takes in 8% of Chinese exports, but Japanese demand doesn't add much to the growth of those exports. In 2010, Japan contributed only 1.9ppt to the 31.3% year-on-year growth of China's exports.
Secondly, Japan has been in a 20-year economic funk, and as a result, the importance of the country in the world economy has been on the decline.
NY Daily News not so worried either:
Many investors are selling because of uncertainty about the impact the nuclear situation might have not only on Japan, but also on American companies. Japan, the world's third-largest economy, accounts for 10% of U.S. exports.
"It's a situation where you sell, and you ask questions later," said economist Peter Cardillo of Avalon Partners.
But the damage to the U.S. and other major economies is expected to be relatively moderate.
"Japan has not been an engine of global or Asian growth for some time," said IHS Global Insight economist Nariman Behravesh. "This means that the impact of much lower Japanese growth on the world economy will be probably limited and small.
The Day seems divided.
"The 48-hour read is that we've lost a cylinder in the six-cylinder engine that drives economic growth," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst for the Oil Price Information Service, referring to Japan as the third largest economy in the world. "But it's just a couple of days. We're all waiting for the fog of information to clear to see whether it's a market-changing event across commodities."
Kloza urged caution when trying to forecast whether gas would rise to $4 a gallon, as happened in the summer of 2008. The complexities of the problems Japan faces suggest that recovery "is going to be a struggle and something that cuts into economic growth," he said.
The consensus of
economists on The Week is not to be too worried.
