W&L's Smitka Assesses Japanese Business for Canadian TV
Washington and Lee economics professor Mike Smitka, whose two primary research interests are the auto industry and the Japanese economy, appeared on the Canadian Business News Network last week to assess the current state of the Japanese economy.
Mike, who taped the interview in Washington, told his interviewer that the Japanese economy is still about 4 percent below its peak in terms of gross domestic product. That repre-sents its failure to recover from the fallout from the U.S. economic crisis.
The March 2011 earthquake and resulting tsunami in Japan took a huge human toll, but the disaster didn’t have the economic impact that it might have, Smitka said.
“As horrific as it was, it hit a region of Japan that was relatively lightly settled. As we saw from supply-chain disruptions, there was a lot of immediate impact,” he said. “But the long-term impact is generally quite small. The loss of life can never be recovered, but the economic activity springs back pretty quickly.”
Watch the complete interview at the link below:
http://watch.bnn.ca/headline/march-2012/headline-march-9-2012/#clip635025
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