14 Replies to “It’s Probably Nothing”

  2. Book your RV on a container ship for a world cruise and get paid for it. Depending on where they stack you an ocean view is certainly a possibility.

  4. They could make better money charging fleeing Greeks on container ships to some third world country that is better off financially. The new boat people. Smuggled to Africa or India for a better life. Just joking…..or not.

  9. Glengarrian
    Those numbers are downright scary, given the trends.
    And The Wun and his MSM sycophants are trying to sell the idea the economy is recovering. Given fuel usage, their conclusion s a joke, as are most of the so-called conclusions in the comment section of your quoted article.
    The US is very sick, and the fever is getting worse.

  10. Glengarian, Dan:
    As much as you can trust government stats, US fuel economy for passenger cars has increased by almost 20% since 1999, and by over 17% for light trucks.
    Meanwhile, the price of gas has risen from an average of $1.25 US/US gal in 1999, to almost $2.50 last year. Think you might consider driving to Myrtle Beach instead of Disney World?
    Finally, no matter what lies the BLS tells about jobs, the number of jobs in America has increased from 126 million in ’97 to 136 million in 2011, while unemployment has almost doubled from 6.7 million to 13.3 million.
    So, combine vastly increased fuel economy, even higher increases in fuel prices, and a depressed economy – it’s no wonder that fuel demand has gone down. But I’d suggest that factors 1) and 2) are more important than 3) in causing the drop.

  11. @Farmer Joe:
    To understand Perry is to understand the BDI and vice versa. What the author of the article says is that the BDI was a great leading indicator…. right up until it wasn’t.
    Mark Perry is a panglossian optimist, always believing the market is getting it right, even when the market is heavily distorted by government. He praises every positive indicator until it turns down, and then he ignores it until it gets better. He is the ultimate cherry picker of data that supports his preconceived notions. He liked the BDI when it was going up, and it vanished from his radar when it was going down. He liked the U. Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index when it was up, and avoided it when it was down.
    For years, people have called him out on this, and he dismisses his critics. For years people told him the basic premise of the BDI was flawed: that the supply of ships is NOT perfectly inelastic. Without that, the BDI is not a good indicator of world aggregate demand.
    He’s a good libertarian who puts faith in free markets, but he praised rising house prices and car sales spurred by government programs. He’s better than a socialist. But if you want an objective viewpoint of the economy, you ought to look for a better economist. He frequently makes errors in basic assumptions.
    This article he posts is supposed to be the saving grace of his flawed analysis. If he had been paying attention, people were telling this to him four years ago when all these “greedy shippers” were overbuilding all those massive vessels.

  12. reminds me of the predicament that the auto companies got into where it was cheaper to keep building cars few people wanted to pay a profitable price for rather than pay the layoff and severance costs shutting the plant(s) down would have triggered.
    Such circumstances rarely turn around.

  13. petroleum usage in the U.S. at 1997 levels and gasoline at 2001 levels:
    On the plus side this is giving the oil companies the opportunity to buy relatively cheap offshore oil and turn it into more expensive petroleum products for export, which at least helps the US balance of trade.
    if you look at the net data, real petroleum imports are back to levels of 20 years ago. This shows that the US is making much more significant progress in reducing its dependence on foreign oil than is generally recognized.
    This also has a significant impact on the US balance of trade. In recent months the real trade balance has appeared to be bottoming and this has been starting to get economists and analysts optimistic that trade could make a significant positive contribution to growth in coming quarters.
    http://www.angrybearblog.com/2011/09/petroleum-exports.html

  14. This may or may not be relevant, but the Baltic Dry Index is derived from rates for bulk carriers, and the professor talks about container ships in his criticism of the index.
    Bulk carriers carry…umm… bulk materials (raw materials like ores and lumber, and commodities like grain) while container ships carry mainly finished goods. Might his argument be an apples to walnuts comparison?

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