The death toll in this month's powerful earthquakes in southwestern Japan is now 48 lives lost, with the discovery of a body buried beneath one of the giant landslides around the Kumamoto.  Besides the death and destruction, the impact of the quake is being felt all the way across the Pacific Ocean.

General Motors on Monday shut down production at four assembly plants because of parts shortages caused by the quakes in Japan.  The closures - at the GM plants Oshawa, Canada; Spring Hill, Tennessee;  Lordstown, Ohio; and Fairfax, Kansas - are expected to last for at least a couple of weeks.  It adds GM to the list of Japanese car manufacturers affected by the devastating quakes.

Nissan and Mitsubishi automobile plants were briefly shut down, as were Honda's motorcycle operations.  Toyota was hit hardest, with most of the plants building cars for overseas markets taken offline.  Those four impacted plants went back online yesterday, but Toyota expects to lose about 80,000 units of production, including up to 4,000 deliveries to China due to the disaster.

General Motors is not projecting a material financial impact, and a slowdown might actually work to the company's advantage.  RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak wrote the "near-term disruption could help alleviate some near-term elevated US inventory levels".