What was the most expensive car crash in history? Well I know that the car crash scene in the Blues Brothers movie was the most expensive car crash scene in the history of Hollywood movies, but sometimes real life is more amazing than fiction.
Original Blues Brothers: The biggest movie car crash in history
There was a mightily expensive car accident in Japan, a car crash that happened over the weekend, is being said to be the most expensive in history (of course that doesn't include professional car racing!). This accident had 14 vehicles.
Police said three Mercedes Benz cars and a Lamborghini Diablo were also involved in the massive crash at the weekend on the Chugoku Expressway, in the country’s south-west.
Witnesses reported hearing a “tremendous noise” just a few moments before the accident on the Yamaguchi prefecture highway amid terrible driving conditions.
Bwa! Ha! Ha! Ha!
While the majority of the 14 vehicles – which also included a Japanese supercar Nissan GT-R Skyline and a Toyota Prius – were travelling along the Osaka Prefecture-bound bended lane at least one Mercedes CL600 was driving in the opposite direction.
Television footage showed the cars - either wrecked or destroyed - spread across the highway, in a trail of crumpled metal and broken glass. Several of the vehicles were wedged up against the metal barriers.
Miraculously, none of drivers – the majority of whom are reported to be foreign car enthusiasts – were seriously hurt in the wreckage but the bill is still bound to be painful nonetheless.
You just know that these adult children were hot rodding their cars... And, yep, the news report below confirms it! They were doing between 140 ~ 160 kpm (about 100 miles per hour) on an 80 kpm road (about 50 miles per hour). Doesn't sound that fast but it is awful fast on Japan's narrow roads... Morons.
Japan News of the accident:
I wonder what the odds are of 14 idiots in their hot cars all converging on the exact same place in the universe at the exact same time is? Answer: 68,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to 1.
The Japanese government must be totally out of their minds. Which is worst the US government of the Japanese? Hmmm. Good question:
MISTER ROGERS - YOU CAN NEVER GO DOWN THE DRAIN
On August 4th, I wrote a short blog post entitled the Japanese Central Bank Throws Away a Billion Dollars Again. It was another protest over the Japanese government repeating past mistakes by using tax monies to buy dollars to support the yen. I wrote:
This morning when I woke up I checked the financial markets, gold, silver and, of course, the dollar yen rate.
I was somewhat surprised to see the yen at ¥76.9-something to the US dollar. A hour or two later, the yen had dropped to its current ¥78.9 per US dollar. Obviously the Japanese Central Bank intervened and bought a bunch of dollars.
Fools. When will they ever learn? They keep throwing our hard earned tax money down the drain to stop the yen's rise, but it is all in vain as the yen's appreciation continues.
I would later learn that it wasn't a "billion dollars" (of course not!) but $56 billion dollars. I wrote that history would repeat itself and that these types of market interventions never work. Japan has tried this sort of thing over and over and the results are always the same; they may halt, temporarily, the rise of the yen, but they cannot stop the yen from rising as interventions do nothing to change market fundamentals.
Remember, less than one year ago, for the first time in 15 years, in Sept. of 2010 when Japan intervened to stop the yen's rise?
Japan intervened in the foreign-exchange market for the first time since 2004 after a surge in the yen to the strongest against the dollar in 15 years threatened to stunt the nation’s economic recovery.
Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda confirmed the intervention, speaking to reporters today in Tokyo. He said Japan contacted other nations about the step, without specifying that today’s measure was taken unilaterally. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshito Sengoku said the ministry considers 82 per dollar to be the line of defense, after it reached a high of 82.88 earlier today.
Japan hadn’t intervened to sell yen in the foreign-exchange market since 2004, when the yen was around 109 per dollar. The Bank of Japan, acting on behest of the Ministry of Finance, sold 14.8 trillion yen in the first three months of 2004, after record sales of 20.4 trillion yen in 2003. Noda didn’t say how much was used in today’s action, while that figure will be released at a later date.
Japan is now slipping down a very dangerous slope and I fear that the slide is increasing in velocity. This makes for at least three publicly announced interventions in less than one year.
As I wrote, interventions never work. Mish Shedlock sensei! back me up on this one, will you?
Countries are now playing a game of "Top This" to see who can do the dumbest things.... If stocks are ready to go up they will. If not they won't. Intervention will accomplish nothing other than create an environment of suspicion that stocks need to be propped up or they would fall. When intervention starts, investors are deprived of normal market signals and will not know if share prices have really bottomed or not. This silliness by Japan is going to create massive mistrust, and massive mistrust is never good for the markets.
I write over and over until my fingers are bleeding that the government is run by idiots. For over twenty years, the clowns "at the helm" of the Japanese government have been creating debt and trying to manipulate the markets. We have the current situation to show for it: Massive public debt and an economy mired in the mud.
Last year's currency intervention was to stop the yen when it was at about ¥82 to the US dollar. The Japanese Central Bank threw $63 billion dollars at the problem then.
FIVE DAYS ago, the yen and dollar rate was ¥76.9 yen to one US dollar. The Japanese government threw $56 billion dollars at that. They were patting themselves on the back because the yen quickly shot past ¥80 to the US dollar. That was on August 4, 2011.
As of 6:38 am Aug. 9, 2011
Now, today, it is August 9, 2011 and the yen - dollar rate sits at ¥77.77 to one US dollar. The intervention, after a short five days is shown to be a total failure.
The most laughable part of this is the Japanese Finance Minister Yoda, Noda, whatever his name is actually said:
"It's better to wait for a little while before judging the impact of intervention," he told a news conference.
That's like the big race at the horse track. The results have been made official, the winning horse has already been claimed winner and is already in the winner's circle and Noda is holding a losing ticket. Yet he says, "We'd better wait awhile. There might be a claim!"
Ha! Ha! Ha!
The Dow Jones stock market crashed today 5.55% (-634.76). The Nikkei will follow suit. The yen is almost back to where it was a week ago.
What's the Japanese government solution to the problem?
Economics Minister Kaoru Yosano warned markets on Friday that they should not assume that Tokyo is done with stepping into the market, while stressing again the need for Japan, Europe and the United States to adopt common policies to contain the pessimism about the global economy.
Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results... - Albert Einstein
Is the financial Armageddon coming soon? Many people are now warning that it is inevitable. I agree. It may not be in 60 days, but I think it is coming Autumn 2011. I'm not sure, but things are lining up poorly so I think you had better get prepared. This is a warning.
People should listen to my warnings. I warned people in October of 2008 to buy gold and silver and to stock up on food (click the links for proof). At that time, gold was $724.08 an ounce (today gold is $1562.30) and silver was $9.11 an ounce (today silver stands at $47.40).
If you had taken my advice, you would have easily more than doubled your investment in gold and taken over a 520% profit on silver. It's still not too late to get into gold and silver but a price correction is coming so wait a bit.* There will be no price correction on food. Stock up now, while you can.
*Note: A few hours after the posting of this article (check the dates and times) the price of silver dropped almost 10%.
After the big Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, when the stores shelves were bare for a week or so (and no one knew at the time how things were going to turn out on the food and water situation) my family was fine; we had 6 months of food and water, enough for 5 people, stocked up and ready to go. When people panicked and ran away from Tokyo or when they were fighting for parking spaces at the local grocery store, or fighting for bottles of water, I only watched and shook my head in disbelief.
How can people be so gullible and foolish? How can people be so negligent and irresponsible not to be prepared?
The repercussions of the Japan earthquake and tsunami followed by the nuclear accident has created shock waves throughout the world. Throw that on top of the soon-to-come collapse of the Euro...
Either preceded or followed by the collapse of the US dollar....
A lot of people predicted an economic calamity after the earthquake and tsunami. But, now some are saying it didn't happen. The fact is that the earthquake and tsunami are blips on the screen in the overall picture of the world economy.... But taken together with the information contained in the videos above, and they stat to cause one to consider.
Consider the Euro zone and the US dollar - along with Japan's aging problem and public debt problems - in the context of the repercussions for the business world of the Japan disaster. For a small example of how the Japan calamity is affecting foreign nations and companies, consider the fact that Japanese cars manufacturers have closed many of their plants as they are unable to obtain parts.
On initial inspection, this doesn't seem to be such a problem. But these plants, and including Japanese plants in the USA, employ tens of thousands of people. Now, what about the satellite businesses that deal with cars? The list is long, but here's two easy ones; Tire makers or service stands? What about other businesses that cater to auto worker employees? How about them? Home manufacturers, clothes makers, shoes manufacturers, the entertainment sector, banks, credit card companies, etc., etc.?
Now, consider the fact that nearly ever company must file their quarterly business report, well, every quarter. That means that the earthquake occurred on March 11... Let's just use March 30th as an easy calculation... This means that all of these corporations will show the effect of the Japan disaster - added to an already overloaded world economic crisis - and you just might have one more straw added to the camel's back... Could it be the straw that breaks the camel's back?
I don't think so. But throw on the extremely high probability of a Greek, Irish and Portuguese default on public debt and the ground swell rumors now abounding that Spain and Italy are next ( and are "Too big to bail") then you have a serious problem.
Let me give you fair warning again. Especially if you live in Japan:
1) Store up enough water for at least 2 months (6 months preferable) 2) Fill your bathtub with water every night (if water stops you can use for cleaning) 3) Today or this week, buy at least 2 months of canned food (6 months preferable) 4) It is still not too late! Start saving money every month by buying gold and silver. If you have some savings, take 33% of it out of the bank and buy gold. Take the other 33% and keep it at safe place at home.
It looks like we are headed for some really rough times. Better be prepared to stay out of the way.
If you want to find the best places to buy gold and silver, search those keywords on this blog's search function. I've warned people so many times up until now, that I'm tired of linking to it over and over.
Will people pay attention this time? If history is any guide, the answer is "No!" Readmore..
