In The News

BOJ responds with liquidity injections as concerns mount.

Headline: Japan Nuclear Reactor Cores May Be Damaged

A fire and aftershocks struck the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant today, as officials battling to prevent a nuclear meltdown said fuel rods at two reactors may have been damaged.

Clouds of white smoke or steam started rising from reactor buildings at 10 a.m. and moving westward inland. Japan Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said radiation levels at the plant rose at that time but have since fallen. About 70 percent of the uranium-plutonium fuel rods at the plant’s No. 1 reactor and a third of the No. 2 reactor’s fuel may have been impaired, Tokyo Electric Power Co. said.

Source: finance.yahoo.com

Headline: Foreign bankers flee Tokyo as nuclear crisis deepens

Foreign bankers are fleeing Tokyo as Japan's nuclear crisis worsens, scrambling for commercial and charter flights out of the country and into other major cities in the region.

BNP Paribas (Paris:BNPP.PA - News), Standard Chartered (LSE:STAN.L - News) and Morgan Stanley (MS - News) were among the banks whose staff have left since Friday's earthquake and tsunami, and now a nuclear plant disaster, according to industry sources with direct knowledge of the matter.

Source: finance.yahoo.com

Headline: Bank of Japan emergency funding hits nearly $700B

Japan's central bank continued to flood money markets with cash on Wednesday, bringing its total emergency funding to nearly $700 billion as it tries to soothe fears about the economic impact of the catastrophic earthquake, tsunami and unfolding nuclear crisis.

The latest offer of Bank of Japan funding came as stock markets bounced back from a steep sell-off that sent the benchmark Nikkei down 20 percent over two days to an almost two-year low. The index finished up 5.7 percent at 9,093.72.

Source: finance.yahoo.com