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World bids sayonara to a rocky 2008

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mark in nagoya, perhaps you know a lot about Japan's economic history of the last ten years, however, I welcome you to tour the Tokai district or any other manufacturing centre (say, Sony which gave some 16,000 of its employees the pink slip last year).

Perhaps you didn't read or hear about Toyota's red ink in 2008, the first in 70 years of operation. In any event, the toll has yet to be counted in terms of actual jobs lost.

The company is forecasting an operating loss of 150 billion yen ($US1.6 billion) for fiscal year to March 2009 reversing its previous forecast of a 600 billion yen profit. The figure is a dramatic fall from last year's record profit of 2.27 trillion yen or $25 billion. Toyota has not made a loss since it first started publishing results in the 1940-41 fiscal year. Its internal records showed a small loss in its first year of operation in 1937.

Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe painted a bleak picture of the corporation's prospects, saying: "It's a kind of emergency that we've never experienced before. The environment surrounding us is extremely harsh... The change in the world economy is of a magnitude that comes once every hundred years... The tough times are hitting us far faster, wider and deeper than expected. This is an unprecedented crisis requiring urgent action." Source: WSWs.org

This same person, the president of Toyota Motor Corporation, maybe looking for a new job this year... Reports: Top Japanese Auto Executive in Trouble Source: The Chosun Ilbo http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200812/200812240031.html

Or perhaps you care to read this article about the Brazilian Japanese population in Japan... 'Japan's migrant workers will just be first to lose jobs' Source: Times OnLine http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article5400502.ece

As one of the readers of the same article wrote, 'the 2008 tsunami ... is not over'. This tsunami is going to rewrite the history of Asia's economic success.

So, get with it Mark in Japan... I'd recommend you get some first hand experience about the real economic crisis. For a starter, I'd suggest you meet some Japanese people who work in manufacturing.

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"Japan has long boasted a system of lifetime employment at major companies, but that has unraveled this year amid the financial crisis."

Could they try to be accurate, at least? That "system" started unravelling at least 10 years ago. It really hasn't been an issue in the current economic crisis.

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Some good among all the bad:

It was the year the world basically said sayonara to anthropogenic "global warming."

Americans let "Kwanzaa" die a quiet death in 2008.

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Associated Press writers Dheepti Namasivay in Paris, France, Frances D’Emilio in Rome, Italy, Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Ireland, Robert Barr in London, England, Kristen Gelineau in Sydney, Australia, Denis Gray in Bangkok, Thailand, Dikky Sinn in Hong Kong, China, Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, Eileen Ng in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Biswajeet Banerjee in Lucknow, India, and Yuri Kageyama in Tokyo, Japan, contributed to this story.

how many AP writer's does it take to write a New Year's article?...

that's a sign of hard times...

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2009 will has less violence with more pacifist new administration of democrats. Foreign war policies now going into twists in iraq/afghanistan and elsewhere. Economical solutions requires all nations to adjust and make do with neccessities to pass slowdown period caused by financial peak falls.

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If 2008 is termed as 'rocky' year, 2009 will be "rocky n mucky" year. Reason that 2008 tsunami that has swept financial markets is not yet over and its after-effects on economy will be disastrous for advanced countries. However, terrorism will decline depending on new policies of new admn in the U.S.A.

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