Well, somebody has to carry all those toxic toys and building materials.
- Nemo
Well, somebody has to carry all those toxic toys and building materials.
- Nemo
Does this mean Obama is "glimmmering" now?
A data point to call a bottom?
That's interesting... what would be some other series that might confirm this?
Dead cat bounce, I presume.
IMO no proper rebound until late fall, technically out of recession mar/apr 2010, anemic recovery until 2012
It looks to me like this is the same "rebound" that is super common every March. It should have been expected, and merely highlights the YoY decline... No?
Is this seasonal?
"The Mexican and U.S. governments will hold joint military exercises in Florida from April 19 to May 7, DefenseLink reported April 14. The Mexican Senate approved the exercises on April 14, and it will be the first time the United States and Mexico have conducted joint exercises."
Be careful, Gov. Perry.
Pavel Chichikov
Stress Tests: Who Will Take the Fall?
To view our impartial assessment, please visit:
Yes, it looks seasonal to me too.
CR, if you have the raw data, can you look at 12 month periods and see if this is undeed unusual?
an inflection point while cliff diving?
The last time the country was divided along color lines (Blue & Grey), we had a Civil War...
The divide between the Red & Blue will only grow wider as the other 49 talk of being their own sovereign states, left to their own fate.
It looks to me like this is the same "rebound" that is super common every March.
Yeah, look specifically at the outbound series during 2005 and 2006 early in the year. Interesting none the less...
So I guess this means that Bank letters of credit are being honored again, at least in some markets...
March is when the Icebergs melt and clear out off of Long Beach.
Carneades, I've seen you post the same article link several times. The irritating part is that you don't even have speculation about who will take the fall.
Either beef up the article with some content or move on. Here's my name of who should take the fall: Citi.
Inventories are being pared down. Raw Materials?
Qwest ex-CEO Nacchio loses bid not to be imprisoned
WASHINGTON, April 14 (Reuters) - The former CEO of Qwest International Inc (Q.N: Quote, Profile, Research), convicted of insider trading, lost his bid to further delay his prison sentence on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected his appeal.
The former chief executive officer was convicted in 2007 on 19 counts of insider trading related to sales of Qwest stock in 2001, after company officials warned him the company could not meet its financial targets. He was scheduled to start serving his six-year prison term on Tuesday. (Reporting by James Vicini, Editing by Leslie Gevirtz)
Inbound traffic was 6% below last March.
Outbound traffic was 9.8% below March 2008
What rebound?
Something odd here.
Are these TEUs in / out of the well, or ones that leave the free / transshipping port complex?
The rebound seems a bit sharp for the rail side and the ship bookings, but is definitely in line with the general uptick in intermodal rail flow. Maybe next month will be a better read and we will see how much idle freight there was.
Looking positive for fundamental trade flows staying intact, so there won't be a sudden collapse in fulfillment.
on the pacific ocean:
scrap metal and cardboard headed west, adulterated food, cheap plastic stuff, sneakers and clothing headed east.
a great gyre of plastic waste somewhere in the middle
S&P Chief Defends Pay Structure Regulators Say Creates Conflict
By Jesse Westbrook
April 14 (Bloomberg) -- Standard & Poor's President Deven Sharma defended his company's compensation structure amid criticism from regulators that being paid by investment banks to assign a credit rating creates a conflict of interest.
Sharma, in remarks prepared for a Securities and Exchange Commission roundtable tomorrow, said the "issuer-pays" model ensures that the highest number of bonds get ratings. Without grades, it would be difficult for some borrowers to raise money, particularly "new entrants to the capital markets," he said.
March 2008:
Inbound traffic was 35% above February.
Outbound traffic was 25% above February.
By comparison March 2006:
Inbound traffic was 37% above February.
Outbound traffic was 33% above February.
Looks like it might be normal seasonal changes.
I keep wondering if and when when some point of international tension and imbalance is going to tip over and start spinning. Pakistan? Georgia (*Gruziya*)? The financial, economic and geopolitical can modulate each another in highly unstable and unpredictable ways. It occurred to me again over the past few days because of the recent incident off the coast of Somalia.
I've just read Michael Dobbs' history of the Cuban missile crisis, and it seems to me that the great theme of the book is the illusion of control.
Pavel Chichikov
Leverage it..
_____________________________________________________
Lehman Sits on Bomb of Uranium Cake as Prices Slump (Update1)
By Linda Sandler, Yuriy Humber and Christopher Scinta
April 14 (Bloomberg) -- Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is sitting on enough uranium cake to make a nuclear bomb as it waits for prices of the commodity to rebound, according to traders and nuclear experts.
The bankrupt bank, in the throes of paying off creditors, acquired uranium cake "under a matured commodities contract" and plans to sell it when the market improves "to realize the best prices," Chief Executive Officer Bryan Marsal said.
Are you calling Bottom in US exports CR?
I spent a fortnight one day in Long Beach, or at least it felt that way.
I am pleasantly surprised to see that concepts such as 'illusion of control' are being used more frequently on CR
//I've just read Michael Dobbs' history of the Cuban missile crisis, and it seems to me that the great theme of the book is the illusion of control.//
It must be a pirate thingy...
ac, REBear, we have to be careful with the Chinese New Year - and the New Year impacted Feb imports from China, but I think the export rebound is probably real. Exports aren't very seasonal (unlike imports around Christmas). I want to see the March Long Beach numbers, but this suggests to me some rebound in trade in March.
best to all.
Calculated Risk
Looking at some of the data for previous years I'm seeing a lot of variation, but there are a number of very dramatic rebounds for both the inbound loaded and outbound loaded data points from Feb to March in a number of years.
The best conclusion I can come to so far is that during this period the numbers are highly volatile but since I see major jumps in years where the economy wasn't staging a recovery from a recent slump or experiencing a major cyclical change I have trouble inferring anything here from just one month.
Also it looks like sometimes there's not a big jump from Feb to Mar but instead from Mar to April.
Aargh - me cargo of hot pants has come in!!!
Eau du Control, by prince machiavelli
My take, channeling Prof. Krugman: businesses had cut imports until inventory fell in line with projected demand. And demand was projected to be much lower. Now that this has happened, they are ramping up orders to support the new, lower inventory level. It's not a recovery.
Exports aren't very seasonal (unlike imports around Christmas). I want to see the March Long Beach numbers, but this suggests to me some rebound in trade in March.
It might be worth putting together that monthly chart that you do, so we could compare 5 years worth of Jan data against each other (and 5 of Feb, Mar etc...)
ac, yes, it is just one month. But after all the cliff diving in trade, this is a change (so it is worth looking at IMO)
best wishes.
Calculated Risk
I agree. Maybe the trucking and railroad data will provide some insights.
Thanks CR
Should we expect to see shipping rates rise again or will that come later.
I have read that inter-Asian trade is way down I'll try to find recent news there.
Somebody ought to compare what larger concern scrap metal places are offering for Copper, Aluminum, etc., compared to the spot prices, to give an idea of how things are really going in the shipping biz. They are the perfect barometer to give you the skinny on what's really happening,, as their business model was built upon the idea of hitch-hiking back on empty Cargo Cult Container ships.
My take, channeling Prof. Krugman: businesses had cut imports until inventory fell in line with projected demand. And demand was projected to be much lower. Now that this has happened, they are ramping up orders to support the new, lower inventory level. It's not a recovery.
Businesses have actually gotten very good at managing their inventory levels in recent years...
When they're not being goosed by government credit initiatives that is.
Since someone mentioned Krugman
_____________________________
April 14, 2009, 10:15 AM
Time for bottles in coal mines
(http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/14/time-for-bottles-in-coal-mines/)
//Paging Keynes, who pointed out the problem with projects that are of some use besides their role as stimulus. Such projects
because they are not wholly wasteful, tend to be judged on strict "business" principles.
He then went on to propose an alternative:
If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.
Seriously: if the projects really are coming in cheaper than expected, that doesn't mean we should bank the savings; it means that we need more projects.//
I can tell you about the current/future container traffic at the Port of Vancouver, downtown terminal. Down from 1-2 per week, to 1 per month for April and May. There was a post New Year uptick for drybulk and container traffic, and it's worse than it was before that uptick now.
Based on that I would say the containers inbound to LA are either:
- part of that uptick that has come and gone
- based on the USD which has gained on most Asian countries, notably the exporters South Korea and India
It would be interesting to know if the packing of those containers has at all changed. Eg before a company might end up sharing a container to save on cost, but now flexibility is valued more than the cost of shipping partially empty containers
EvilHenryPaulson,
Still betting that Vancouver and other Canadian cities will not suffer 'Californication'?
Is there any other new year's different from ours, except for Chinese and Jewish?
Do not even start retarded "EHP vs. the devil for the soul of Vancouver Island's comps" time, Lucifer. Everyone knows that you think Vancouver RE is way overvalued. I'm sorry a downtown Vancouver condo left your mom after it got her pregnant or something.
BDI is a kind of leading indicator and it isn't signaling a recovery.
Is there any other new year's different from ours, except for Chinese and Jewish?
Yes.
Green shoots of the fake recovery I presume? Or, are we about to face the most massive inflation the country has ever experienced?
I'll have a Baltic Dry Index on the rocks, barkeep.
Chinese New Year actually had the first week in January this year rather than starting in February.
Byzantine_Ruins,
How about putting our present crop of banksters, lawyers and MBAs in some of our deeper mine shafts.
Lucifer
I have long carried around the factoid that three quarters of all post 2001 recession jobs created in BC were in the construction industry. I didn't say it wouldn't be bad in the short term, but it is absolutely necessary and healthy for the long term. Now people who just want a home to live in will be able to avoid joining a ponzi scheme. The low Canadian dollar has been helping a lot of sectors out, so it hasn't really spread beyond the construction and flip my house sectors yet. If you are referencing the balance sheets of Canadian banks, I think my predictions have held their own until this point. No more, no less. Lagom.
We cannot have a Mindshaft Gap!
Lucifer (member) wrote on Tue, 04/14/2009 - 12:41pm.
Still betting that Vancouver and other Canadian cities will not suffer 'Californication'?
The "product" is the same on East Hastings Street as on Sunset Blvd. Except colder.
Rob Dawg BDI is down thx that's what I thought.
If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.
Seriously: if the projects really are coming in cheaper than expected, that doesn't mean we should bank the savings; it means that we need more projects.
Again, these are just Karl Marx's arguments reformulated. They haven't worked well in practice.
In a post-industrial economy that is so complex and so diverse central planning maybe be impossible, if so it could be that these things are in fact far worse than nothing because they create a situation where we're training people to let the government think for them even though the government doesn't have sufficient information gathering and processing ability to manage localized concerns.
I have a feeling it was a lot of coal exports. China had a tough Jan/Feb as far as weather and they were found to be short coal. Watch the coal names report good numbers IMO
Hey CR,
DId you see this from Judge Posner in the NY Times:
The banking collapse occurred last September. The government's unpreparedness (for which Greenspan and Bernanke, successive chairmen of the Federal Reserve, and academic economists bear a large part of the responsibility because of their failure to spot the housing and credit bubbles and their mistaken belief that a depression, as distinct from a mild recession, could never again happen in the United States) and its resulting spasmodic, improvisational responses allowed the crisis to deepen, precipitating the depression we're now in. Contributing factors, besides the dearth of "safe" savings, were our huge budget deficits, which have greatly added to the costs and the inflation risk of the immense federal expenditures on recovery. Indeed, it is those costs and that risk that justify calling the present downturn a depression rather than just a recession; for the costs of a depression/recession include not only the loss in output and employment during the depression period, but also include the costs of recovery.
Now both Robert Reich and Judge Posner have beaten you to the call. They're both saying we're already in a depression!
But you're still holding out!!!!!!!!
Seriously: if the projects really are coming in cheaper than expected, that doesn't mean we should bank the savings; it means that we need more projects.
BTW this is the same old scam Wall Street pulls every quarter underestimating profits so people will think stocks are a good buy when the earnings finally come out.
Shameful...
Coal, Guns & Ammo
The bright spots in our economy
yee gads!
How are SIngapore and Japan doing?
http://afterthecrash.net - Home of the Doomer Story Portal and Other Stuff
EvilHenryPaulson,
I have to say that people buying a 550 sq ft coal harbour condo for over a million was what convinced me that things had transcended the ludicrous... if such a thing is possible.
I have always said that people ignore problems until the stench from the rotting corpses can no longer be hidden. I think that canada has not reached that stage yet.
//If you are referencing the balance sheets of Canadian banks, I think my predictions have held their own until this point.//
The Year Over Year changes are what is real, the monthly changes are a distraction...plot the year over year % change and see what is really going on...
For long singapore and japan believed that they were prosperous because they were ethnic chinese (majority) and japanese respectively. They looked up to whites and looked down on other groups.. Wonder how this recession will affect their psyche?
//How are SIngapore and Japan doing?//
"businesses had cut imports until inventory fell in line with projected demand........Now that this has happened, they are ramping up orders to support the new, lower inventory level. It's not a recovery."
Actually, if what you say is true, then it is a recovery. It's just not a rebound to pre-crash levels, though hopefully it is a rebound to levels that are healthy and sustainable for the economy, and some businesses can think about adding jobs, albeit not to pre-crash levels. However, since we know that the economy was unhealthily overgrown before, it's best not to jump back to prior levels, but to grow in a slower, more controlled manner. At least we can hope-
I'd have never thought for an instant that we'd turn into a later-day Melanesian Cargo Cult island, but shift happens.
They built faux airports complete with faux planes, trying to lure the cargo back.
Will we patiently wait by the oceanside?
NEW POST at Calculated Risk.
Ways to view:
Dead simple, read only interface at: http://users.thelink.net/bobn/CR
CRC-like interface at http://realize.org/cr/crcizer/phpCRo.php
Full Blown Interface at http://www.hoocoodanode.org/
For live chat, and the new Mishbot feature, as well as notice of new posts on other blogs, join us in IRC.
To access IRC with firefox, install the chatzilla add-on and go to irc://irc.realize.org:9996/calculatedrisk.
Or set your IRC client for server irc.realize.org port 9996 and /join #calculatedrisk.
Feed back via bobn
Selling SRS buy some more SPG puts tomorrow if Kermit makes an appearance
Thanks for the glimmer of good news--so many here only get excited when things get worse. I guess this might be an anomaly--but it feels good to think there's a reason to smile today--that my kids might live in a successful country.
MEL is a dork. Where is your doomerism?
Lucifer
With all due respect, if your perspective of all Canada is based on Coal Harbor you are probably expecting too much. For those that don't know, Coal Harbor is a few blocks in downtown, in the city of Vancouver which itself is a minor part of the metropolitan area and population. Vancouver and its real estate bubbles are something incomprehensible to most Canadians, let alone the ones in the most sensitive luxury condo category. The only provinces that can relate to Vancouver/BC would be Alberta and Saskhatchewan that had low absolute price, extremely high growth bubbles on the back of the commodity booms (primarily oil or fertilizer).
"Coal, Guns & Ammo
The bright spots in our economy
yee gads!"
Just joined the NRA today- Yee Haw
PoLA have the phone on auto-attendant. I'll try again around 2 their time and see if we can get some human being who can answer questions for us.
ac:
Thanks!
That is esaxtly what I was wondering also. How did the time period compare to previous years.
It appears shipping rates skyrocketed through the first week of March (possibly correlating to LA's TEU uptick in load delivery) but has since fallen off a cliff: www.bloomberg.com/apps/cbuilder?ticker1=BDIY%3AIND
It will be interesting to see how this plays over the next few months.
Can we have a year over year graph? I think that would cause us to believe that there is no rebound, only a seasonal uptick.
Well, I don't see a similar massive rebound at the same time last year, so I wouldn't worry about it not being seasonally adjusted. My take is that Chinese imports tend to be non-discretionary items, especially clothing. You can go without getting new clothes for awhile, but eventually you have to get new ones.
Ways to view comments on this thread:
Dead simple, read only interface at: http://users.thelink.net/bobn/CR
CRC-like interface at http://realize.org/cr/crcizer/phpCRo.php
Full Blown Interface at http://www.hoocoodanode.org/
For live chat, join us in IRC.
To access IRC with firefox, install the chatzilla add-on and go to irc://irc.realize.org:9996/calculatedrisk.
Or set your IRC client for server irc.realize.org port 9996 and /join #calculatedrisk.
Feed back via bobn
NEW POST at Calculated Risk.
Ways to view:
Dead simple, read only interface at: http://users.thelink.net/bobn/CR
CRC-like interface at http://realize.org/cr/crcizer/phpCRo.php
Full Blown Interface at http://www.hoocoodanode.org/
For live chat, and the new Mishbot feature, as well as notice of new posts on other blogs, join us in IRC.
To access IRC with firefox, install the chatzilla add-on and go to irc://irc.realize.org:9996/calculatedrisk.
Or set your IRC client for server irc.realize.org port 9996 and /join #calculatedrisk.
Feed back via bobn
Certainly no new info there - inbound is totally in-line with previous March rebounds (due to Chinese new year falling in late late january and 15 days holiday factory closures most of February in China), except at a much lower level as CR noted. Outbound is the inventory replenishment that Taiwan and Chinese factories have already noted, most Taiwanese electronic factories like Hon Hai/Quanta using Intel, AMD or Qualcomm etc chips experienced urgent rush orders in mid March as inventories have fallen to very low levels. There still is a base demand for electronics and PCs in China and US, with Europe slowly picking up. But Japan and emerging world are essentially still tightening their belts. Take this as a sign of global economic recovery at your own peril, certainly Obama glimmers sound more like miragesand self-delusion.
Ways to view comments on this thread:
Dead simple, read only interface at: http://users.thelink.net/bobn/CR
CRC-like interface at http://realize.org/cr/crcizer/phpCRo.php
Full Blown Interface at http://www.hoocoodanode.org/
For live chat, join us in IRC.
To access IRC with firefox, install the chatzilla add-on and go to irc://irc.realize.org:9996/calculatedrisk.
Or set your IRC client for server irc.realize.org port 9996 and /join #calculatedrisk.
Feed back via bobn