Word: kobe
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Earthquake Recriminations The Japanese government's torpid response to the Jan. 17 catastrophe in Kobe (5,090 dead, 29 still missing and about 300,000 homeless) has led to intense criticism of Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama--even from members of his own Socialist Party. Offers of assistance from 60 countries, the U.N. and the World Health Organization poured in, but some were subjectedto endless bureaucratic wrangling. Examples: foreign doctors were rebuffed at first because they did not have Japanese licenses; Swiss sniffer dogs were threatened with quarantine by the Agriculture Ministry. Conditions in the stricken port city, however, are improving...
...Argentina international financing for free-market reform is in jeopardy. In India foreign institutional investors have dumped their holdings, sending the stock market into a steep plunge. In Japan a sharp increase in the damage estimate of the Kobe earthquake has sent the Tokyo market tumbling as money managers expect the country to cash in some of its foreign holdings to pay for reconstruction. In the U.S. investors are pulling back even further in anticipation of yet another interest-rate hike, which would make overseas capital markets even less attractive than they are today...
Such optimism remained limited, for Kobe simply will not be able to pull itself up by the bootstraps easily. The city is so important to Japanese commerce that authorities almost certainly will make heroic efforts to restore dockyards, highways and railways as soon as possible. The central government will furnish up to 90% of the money needed to repair the public infrastructure, and big companies like Toyota and Matushita Electric, some of whose local operations were knocked out briefly by the quake, were recovering quickly. But relatively few small businesses and homeowners were covered by earthquake insurance. The shock...
Another imponderable is how long it will take to restore Kobe's housing. Some 55,000 apartments and houses were wrecked. Although the government immediately began erecting 18,600 prefabricated units in school yards, construction will fall well short of present needs. Only 3% of all households in Hyogo prefecture, which includes Kobe, were covered by earthquake insurance. Even people who can afford to build a new home are likely to be stymied at first by a moratorium on postquake construction, a policy intended to avert slapdash projects and allow time for possible new building-code and zoning strictures...
Such realizations punctured some of the early forecasts of a silver lining in Kobe's tragedy. Even as heavily hit manufacturers like Kobe Steel had to absorb further jolts on the stock market, construction-industry issues were hot prospects on the Tokyo exchange. After the Nikkei index's steep dip early last week, bidding on these shares helped the exchange recover 318 points by the close of trading on Friday. But the boomlet of hope in the ashes was not enough to convince more sober heads...