The pundits can disingenuously blame the crashing Baltric Dry Index on container ship overcapacity and find some dopes to believe that fairy tale, but there’s only one explanation for collapsing rail freight shipment volume in the United States: the consumer has finally suffocated from too much debt and declining real income.
We believe rail data may be signaling a warning for the broader economy,” the recent note from Bank of America says. “Carloads have declined more than 5 percent in each of the past 11 weeks on a year-over-year basis. While one-off volume declines occur occasionally, they are ge
nerally followed by a recovery shortly thereafter. The current period of substantial and sustained weakness, including last week’s -10.1 percent decline, has not occurred since 2009. – Bank of America brain trust
Eric Dubin of The News Doctors brought this article to my attention: Rail Traffic Is Saying Something Worrying About the U.S. Economy
I’d like to point out that the price of oil is collapsing. It will soon be in the $20’s. Several Wall Street fraud shops have decided that oil is headed to $20. I made that call 6 months ago. Oil is the economy’s canary in the coal mine that the Fed can not remove before it dies. Rail freight traffic is the canary’s twin brother.
I hope everyone is braced for impact because the system is in for a much bigger shock than occurred in 2008/2009…and the Fed is out of bullets – just ask former Fed President Richard Fisher…
I’m guessing the FED had to raise rates last month because they already knew from the in-coming data that they’ll have to lower them again soon …. so they raised rates to have a little tiny wee bit of breathing room.
Were the rates really raised, or just more Fed shenanigans?
Who knows??
The Fed may have said it raised rates but the 10 year treasury rate is down around 13 bps since the announcement. Got to watch all the hands of the Fed.
What is totally amazing is all the ancillary transportation businesses are dying. Rail, Trucking, Parcel Post/Fed Ex and UPS, The truck makers, the rail car makers, and auto and lite trucks if there was no channel stuffing. Stuff is not moving. Stuff not moving is stuff not sold.
The good news is that as the BLS reported, jobs are increasing, despite all the lower economic activity. We should be giving our elected leaders a special bonus for all the prosperity they have given us.
The problem is that when this all starts being noticabally falling apart, society is going to erupt in anger. I would hope so –what will it take to get the public angered. Looks like a collapse.
Hal you on the right track (pun intended).
http://www.superstation95.com/index.php/world/750
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-01-11/nothing-moving-baltic-dry-crashes-insiders-warn-commerce-has-come-halt
Germany’s Bild interview with Putin said that Russia has $300+ billion of gold reserves.
Gotta be a translation error, right?
Gold and Foreign reserves, perhaps?
Quite an error to make though.
http://www.bild.de/politik/ausland/wladimir-putin/russian-president-vladimir-putin-the-interview-44104378.bild.html
sorry for the offtopic.