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Long time readers know I use the Baltic Dry Index of dry goods shipping rates as a barometer to gauge global economies because it is an excellent leading indicator.
The chart below shows the current rates in black and other years in different colors. The current rate has dropped below 1,000 making it the lowest December since the so-called Great Recession began in 2008.
By the way, the over-supply of ships is now 5 year-old news so the shipping industry has had enough time to clear the surplus. In other words, we can no longer blame “too many ships” for low shipping rates. This is falling demand.
What we’re seeing is a collapse in commodity demand (and prices) and a massive slowdown in China along with the rest of the world which never really recovered from the Great Recession.
If you think we’re in a recovery, I want to know what you’re smoking and why you’re not sharing.
Gerold
December 9, 2014
Credit for the chart – Zero Hedge
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Thanks for your reply Gerold!
Yes, injecting, or enjoying the crash eyes wide open 🙂
For the disappearing of money, yes, that does play a huge role. For example, look at the EU, cashing trillions and trillions for funds that are in fact never really used. They are simply taking people’s money away until there’s nothing left. So, where is it now? The official answers will not do 😉
Yes, Rome collapsed in large part because of this system, but now there’s one difference. They won’t allow a completely destructive collapse. Aware of this inevitable ending, they are moving towards a totalitarian world, where money does no longer function as it does now. It’s the only way to maintain they control they have. But for that, they need a huge collapse first. They WANT riots, poverty, diseases, war and terrorism. People must demand a huge change. It’s all staged. This is where the US is heading full speed, and Europe is following nicely.
But their biggest problem are China, Africa and Russia. BRICKS is a huge threat – and a very smart move. Gadhafi was setting up his system with Africa and they blew away both Lybia and Gadhafi 🙂 But they cannot do the same with Russia or China. And I can guarantee that Russia and China are moving to have the West crash. And they can make it happen. In one respect, that would be playing into the cards of the West, wanting a collapse. But it would also mean a different currency, a different system. The West would loose all. Considering the very limited and superficial US strategies, I believe they will not be able to cope with the chess the Chinese and Russia are currently playing.
Tom
Our delusional owners want riots, poverty, diseases, war and terrorism to hasten collapse and implement their New World Order. Except it’s not working and neither will their dreams of global governance. They’re delusional because they can’t see the entropy, the disintegration and the separatist movements springing up. Nations are disintegrating along with their delusions of grandeur.
The BLM backed down when Cliven Bundy stood up to them with the whole world watching. Their ass media handmaidens are losing viewers as fast as the alternate media on the internet are picking them up. H.L.Mencken, who said “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public” didn’t reckon on human nature or the internet.
Both Gadhafi of Libya and Hussein of Iraq tried to create gold money so buyers could buy their oil with gold instead of U.S. dollars. Dominique Strauss-Kahn advocated the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR’s) as a new reserve currency. It’s easy enough toppling a couple of tin-pot dictators and throwing DSK under the bus, but like you say, China, Russia and the rest of the BRICS are way too big to topple directly. Russian-sanctioning Europeans are getting angry being the Amerikan’s water boys. The U.S. is fast losing allies. Besides both China and Russia hold the hammer with trillions of U.S. dollars in their reserves they could use to topple the U.S. dollar.
Our psychopathic owners think they can hide behind their stone walls. Who’s gonna cook their meals? As Celente says, “When people have nothing to lose, they lose it.”
Obama plays golf; Putin plays chess and the Chinese play hard-ball. Both Napoleon and Hitler tried to take Russia. NATO won’t succeed either. But, it’ll be a great show!
Gerold
Actually, the Chinese play Go, which involves outmaneuvering opponents.
First, while I am sure that there are those in power that want a New World Order, the government is not monolithic. You have competing interests, little accountability, and therefore very little control. Centralization to the scale that would be needed is virtually impossible. Plus, polls show that virtually everyone distrusts the government, so that does not help their credibility. Any sort of NWO would have to originate outside the government. Napoleon was a low ranking officer is some remote place, while Hitler was a private citizen. Both had no previous connections to the governments at their time (Aristocratic France and Weimar Republic – Napoleon could not gain rank for he was not noble, while Hitler was an unemployed citizen). However, if a high-school dropout, who went to prison and could not get into high school could do it…However, most leaders today thrive on the illusion created by complexity and corruption. They have no real talent, so they would not last long once the illusion that protects them no longer exists.
The real problem with current leaders is that there is no end to their arrogance, which only hurts them in the long-run (And any plans for world domination on their part). Someone I know mentioned that when he was working as an investment banker on Wall Street, the only thing that exceeded the money was the BS that surrounded it. These guys have their heads up their arses so far, its a wonder they can see any light.
I think most people subconsciously, probably brought about by 2008, envision a world much worse than now. Post-apocalyptic tv shows were not popular before 2008, now they are all the rage. People can’t get enough of Walking Dead, Falling Skies, etc. Before 2008, tv shows like Star Trek, were the rage, and they offered a optimistic look at the future. It seems most people realize that such optimistic futures were a pipe dream and things can only go downhill. However, my argument is that once you reach the bottom, there is only one direction to go. Up.
Haha yes indeed! Very specific 🙂 And I also noticed that I should not attempt to write BRICS when overly tired 🙂
Celente is right of course. What the Chinese and Russians well realize is that psychopaths go crazy when there is no resistance. They do not communicate, the Chinese at the top. That pisses the US and their think tank friends off big time. It draws them out, allowing the Chinese and Russions to finish them off. A spectacle in the making! 🙂
Smoking will not do, I recommend injecting by now 🙂
On a more serious note, in my opinion, there has never been any recovery. Not in the sense that things got realistically better. They were/are just very good at simulating recovery, hoping people would/will relax and take new loans, and spend. But well, they can’t. There is nothing left. Most of the money has moved into the hands of the very wealthy, resulting is an immense shortage. Last time I checked, about 500 triillion has secretly been removed from circulation. Somehow no one wonders where the money shortage is resulting from!
Few are aware that the system we use is an exact copy of that used by the Romans. Even then they knew it eventually had to collapse, which it did. This was the true reason for the end of the Roman empire. If you want to know the ending we are facing, check how that ended 😉
Yours are very perceptive observations, John. You’re right about the so-called recovery. It’s mostly smoke, mirrors, propaganda and doctored statistics; fake money, fake jobs, fake GDP, fake everything.
I know that the ultra-wealthy are robbing us blind (and becoming more brazen and open about it) but, until now, I never connected the disappearance of money with collapsing money velocity. I should have known it was more than slack demand and consumer deleveraging.
And, you’re right about the collapse of Rome. Granted it was on a long decline but the debasement of the currency hastened the end until it could no longer defend itself against the ‘barbarians’, many of whom the Roman citizens welcomed with open arms as preferable to Roman tyranny.
Yeah, I think we’re at the injecting stage … 🙂
Gerold
You know on the subject of Roman military decay, despite our so-called “Most powerful army in the world”, we can’t defeat a bunch of ragtag rebels with pitchforks in comparison to the our mufti-billion dollar equipment. If we can’t even defeat them…The British could not defeat a bunch of farmers with pitchforks in the revolutionary war either.
Actually, if you look at the success of Prussia and the Nazis, they were successful due to superior tactics. Prussia started using smaller units and had no real battle formations, while the Germans pioneered tank tactics, using strikingly similiar techniques the Chinese developed two thousand years ago, “Strike where unexpected, bypass strong points, and attack quickly.” Even though the Germans had superior equipment towards the end of WWII (Jet fighters, tiger tanks, etc) they still lost. This means tactics>equipment. However, today’s military relies on tradition and creative thoughts are despised. So, nothing is going to change soon. The US military will only further degenerate.
Agree 🙂
I do believe though that the US and their friends do not wish to defeat those pitchfork rebels. After all, the threat and distraction must continue to exist. Don’t forget that they first consiously created those rebel armies, so their could be a threat 😉
John, where did you come up with this $500 trillion number? Not disagreeing, just curious. Typically we are told the created money wound up in the stock market or maybe bubble areas such as the fracking or alternative energy industries. But 500 trillion is a very large number.