I'LL NEVER LACK FOR WORK.  A National Public Radio report on the Japanese earthquake begins with a reasonable observation.

The earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on Friday forced multinational companies to close factories, fight fires and move workers, inflicting at least short-term damage on the Japan's fragile economy.

Assessing the full economic impact was impossible in the hours after the quake. But traffic clogged streets, trains stopped, flights were grounded and phone service was disrupted or cut off.

Read on, though, and the broken window fallacy emerges.

And in the long run, the disaster could help the Japanese economy as reconstruction projects put people back to work.

Natural disasters "do eventually boost output," said David Hensley, an economist at JPMorgan Chase. The 1989 San Francisco earthquake and the 1994 Northridge quake outside Los Angeles, for example, ultimately helped the local California economies, he said.

Takuji Okubo, an analyst at French bank Societe Generale, said Japan's economy will probably take a hit in March and then rebound strongly. Japanese consumers will need to replace lost cars and appliances, and reconstruction will start.

That's pretty sloppy reporting, particularly for a network that claims to appeal to an intelligent and sophisticated audience.

Prior to the earthquake, Japanese consumers had the option to purchase other goods rather than replace their cars or appliances.  The earthquake puts those consumers in a position of having to replace those goods, which kills those options.  We will see cars and appliances being built, but we will not see the purchases consumers would have made had the earthquake not destroyed the option value in those existing cars.  We won't see the purchases of the dead, and we won't see the goods and services the dead would otherwise have produced, but for the earthquake.

The Japanese deserve better than to have their economic success explained by the destruction of property: the earthquake this time, World War II in one potted explanation of Japan's industrial success.  The United States has enjoyed the opportunity to destroy its industrial capacity, without having to pattern-bomb it first.  By the logic of the broken window fallacy, Detroit is the most promising place in the country to jump-start the economy.

RUNNING EXTRA.  According to Knowledge Problem, the Great and Powerful Larry Summers saw the upside of breaking windows.