>>We have shop-owners to jack up the prices to gouge customers...In Japan, we are witnessing shopowners LOWER prices to the people can afford food;
That is a good point. While no where near the impact of this tsunami, we had two snow storms dump 43 inches of snow here in less than a week. Roofs started collapsing a few days later. Prices for roof rakes went up a good 50% for those that had them in stock. People fleeced towns and homeowners to shovel the snow off their roof. Sure it comes down to ‘what the market will bear’ but one small town got charged 300K to clear the roofs of their schools.
But we also had neighbors helping each other out for free, so not all is lost.
Followed immediately by a complete, total, and utterly predictable sell-off of all available food stocks.