Posted on 11/04/2015 2:11:03 PM PST by amorphous
Over the past year we have regularly contended that a far greater threat to the global economy than either corporate earnings, currency devaluations, rate cuts (or hikes), reserve outflow, or even the stock market, is the sudden, global trade crunch which has been deteriorating rapidly since late 2014 and has seen an even more dramatic drop off as 2015 is winding down. Actually, that is incorrect: global trade is merely a manifestation of the true state of the above listed items.
...
We have in the past joked that the only thing that could possibly save the world from what is a trade recession is if the central banks can somehow find a way to "print trade" the way they artificially boost asset prices higher to give the impression of a status quo normalcy. Unfortunately, as this is not a real option, and with both global and US trade in freefall, many wonder just how will the world's central planners mask this most dangerous aspect of the global economic slowdown?
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
So, how is the derivative insanity overhang going to be wrapped up?
Latest RR #s dont look so good.
You should have a graph of the Baltic Dry Index with your analysis. I think the freefall is indicated there too.
Zero hedge - liars.
This has been my hunch for quite some time. I just keep wondering what the final trigger will be to touch off the proverbial powder keg.
Their statistics are from Wolfstreet.com
Another chart from them..
Zerohedge is just echoing sentiment from this other industry sight, and also Transportation data provider DAT which publishes load-to-truck ratios on a weekly and monthly basis.
Apparently they are working on that very solution.
Zero hedge - liars.
I know nothing about Zero Hedge but I remember hearing more bad than good about them.
Talk about getting distracted. The ship picture got most of my attention as a former sailor. I always wondered about containership loads; about how they kept all that stuff stable at sea. Well, it looks like things can and do go wrong. I doubt the ship had much in the way of counter flooding capability, so I hope it was close to land or the seas stayed calm.
It was kind of a wake-up for me and what it will mean for the entire world when banks close.
It's all winding down... Trump's our best chance of surviving this... he does understand money.
I’m amazed how well those connectors (are whatever they’re called) are still holding the containers together. Obviously they used some pretty good steel to make them!
I’m amazed how well those connectors (or whatever they’re called) are still holding the containers together. Obviously they used some pretty good steel to make them!
Yep, with Cruz as Prez reorganizing the government and Trump as VP doing what he does best, we might just turn this around. :-)
Zero Hedge is a perpetual doom-n-gloom site. On it’s worse days, the comments come from extreme characters totally unfiltered. On it’s best days, they do the foot work the financial CNBC types ignore and often are months ahead of a financial story. In the end, they will be right about the global financial system rebooting, but they dangle each article out like it is going to happen tomorrow. Keep that in mind and filter accordingly.
“Zero hedge - liars.”
I could not open your link without a login.
I note that the link includes a date from a year ago, and the article is about what has happened since then.
The part about trucking from the article:
As reported here a week ago, as recently as 2014, trucking had been booming in what many saw as a banner year.
Capacity was squeezed, and rates were rising, so trucking companies went on a buying binge, ordering everything in the book in preparation for red-hot demand in 2015 and more banner years down the road. But then came 2015.
Among businesses, over-ordering and tepid sales caused inventories to rise and the inventory-to-sales ratio to spike to Financial Crisis proportions. And now businesses are trying to bring them down by trimming orders because theyâre having trouble selling more to the middle class, the over-indebted modern proletariat whose stagnant incomes are being eaten up by skyrocketing costs of housing, healthcare, college, and the like â and they simply canât spend that much on shippable items.
Unusually âslack demandâ in September â the beginning of shipping season â after âa quiet July and even quieter August,â impacted most of the nation, except in the Pacific Northwest, where âfall harvests of apples, potatoes and onions rolled to market in vans as well as reefers,â explained Mark Montague, a statistician at DAT.
September looks terrible compared to September in banner-year 2014. It still âlooks anemic even when compared to the more typical freight movement of September 2013,â Montague said. This slack demand whacked load-to-truck ratios. And that matters:
Load-to-truck ratios signal changes in the marketplace that are usually reflected in truckload rates. In the past five years, a change in the load-to-truck ratio has correlated at a rate of 0.8 with an immediate change in spot market rates, and a sustained change in spot market rates is typically followed by a change in contract rates, as well.
Since late last year, DATâs van load-to-truck ratios have been on a declining trend. Every month this year, the ratios were below the ratios in 2014. In July, August, and September, the ratios hit 1.8, the lowest in years. In September, the ratio was 42% below a year earlier:
See Trucking Chart Above:
Trucking is a thermometer for the merchandise economy. It doesnât track consumer expenses like rent or college. But it tracks exports and imports, manufacturing, distribution, retail, and other sectors. It tracks a big part of the real economy. And the sudden slowdown in the trucking industry is another wildly flashing signal in our recession watch.
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