Yen Falls as North Korea Holds Nuclear Test, Launches MissileOf course, do too much testing in order to impress the neighbors and you will have nothing left to actually safeguard your regime's security.
Bloomberg
By Ron Harui and Gavin Finch - May 25 -- The yen fell from the near highest level in more than two months against the dollar after North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in three years and may have also launched a short-range missile, posing a threat to the region’s security.
(...)
“The missile test may have been conducted to escalate geopolitical risk,” said Akifumi Uchida, Tokyo-based deputy general manager of the marketing unit at Sumitomo Trust & Banking Co., Japan’s fifth-largest lender. “Japan also is geographically close to North Korea so this doesn’t augur well. The yen is being sold."
The USGS Earthquake Hazards Program page has a map with a nice orange square at the test site, with backup data saying the magnitude of the recorded shaking was 4.7 - pretty darn big.
I am still waiting for a realistic estimate of the device's yield.
Later - The Sankei Shimbun (ya gotta love 'em) says that the DPRK has launched two short range missiles from the Musudanri test site.
2 comments:
Ahem, has it occurred to the good people of Bloomberg that investors/speculators may just have been selling the Yen in a profit-taking move?
As for the fireworks, the Guardian quotes Russian experts talking about a yield between 10 and 20 kilotons.
"Actually, we don't call it a crisis," Orsci [the Slovenian guide] interrupts. "Here we are used to crisis, and this is not yet a crisis.
Washington Post, 5/24/09
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052201107.html?hpid=travelpromo
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