Jan 30 2012
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This is an Open Thread
Jan 30 2012
Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.
Find the past “On This Day in History” here.
January 30 is the 30th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 335 days remaining until the end of the year (336 in leap years).
On this day in 1969, The Beatles’ last public performance, on the roof of Apple Records in London. The impromptu concert is broken up by the police.
A din erupted in the sky above London’s staid garment district. Gray-suited businessmen, their expressions ranging from amused curiosity to disgust, gathered alongside miniskirted teenagers to stare up at the roof of the Georgian building at 3 Savile Row. As camera crews swirled around, whispered conjecture solidified into confirmed fact: The Beatles, who hadn’t performed live since August 1966, were playing an unannounced concert on their office roof. Crowds gathered on scaffolding, behind windows, and on neighboring rooftops to watch the four men who had revolutionized pop culture play again. But what only the pessimistic among them could have guessed-what the Beatles themselves could not yet even decide for sure-was that this was to be their last public performance ever. . . . . .
When the world beyond London’s garment district finally got to see the Beatles’ last concert, it was with the knowledge, unshared by the original, live audience, that it was the band’s swan song. On Abbey Road Paul had sung grandly about “the end,” but it was John’s closing words on the roof that made the more fitting epitaph for the group that had struggled out of working-class Liverpool to rewrite pop history: “I’d like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves, and I hope we passed the audition.”
Jan 30 2012
Crossposted from The Stars Hollow Gazette
The Baltic Dry Index–
tracks worldwide international shipping prices of various dry bulk cargoes.
The index provides “an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials by sea. Taking in 26 shipping routes measured on a timecharter and voyage basis, the index covers Handymax, Panamax, and Capesize dry bulk carriers carrying a range of commodities including coal, iron ore and grain.”
Since 1744. Because Cargo Ships take a long time to build and are very expensive, capacity is relatively stable and rises and falls in the price are a leading indicator of Economic Demand for Raw Materials.
Handymax is the smaller sizes, Panamax is the largest size that will fit through the Panama Canal, Capesize are so large they have to sail around Cape Horn and the Cape of Good Hope.
Unlike stock and bond markets, the BDI “is totally devoid of speculative content,” says Howard Simons, an economist and columnist at TheStreet.com. “People don’t book freighters unless they have cargo to move.”
The companion index is the HARPEX which doesn’t have it’s own Wikipedia entry, but which measures shipments of cargo packaged in containers. Some raw materials yes, but mostly manufactured items being transported for assembly and sale. Your Foxconn iPhone came from China in one.
Last week Louis Basenese of Wall Street Daily (not Journal) published this piece that made some Economists nervous.
The Most Alarming Chart I’ve Seen All Week
Louis Basenese, Wall Street Daily
Published Fri, Jan 20th, 2012
While (almost) everyone finally agrees that the United States has avoided a nasty double-dip recession, a slowdown’s brewing elsewhere in the world.
How can I be so sure? All I have to do is look at the latest chart for the Baltic Dry Index.
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(T)he Index is down 48.4% in the last month. And it’s down 54.4% in the last three months.The culprit? Why, Europe, of course.
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On Wednesday, the World Bank cut its world economic growth forecast explicitly because of Europe’s never-ending debt crisis. Meanwhile, as Europe’s debt crisis persists, Bloomberg reports that the IMF plans to cut its global growth forecasts, too.
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A recession is afoot, if not already underway.
And thus it has come to pass, exactly as predicted.
U.K. Teeters on Brink of Recession as King Signals More Stimulus: Economy
By Scott Hamilton and Jennifer Ryan, Bloomberg News
Jan 25, 2012 7:38 AM ET
The U.K. economy shrank more than economists forecast in the fourth quarter as manufacturers cut output and services stagnated, leaving Britain on the brink of another recession
Gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent from the third quarter, when it increased 0.6 percent, the Office for National Statistics said in London today. The median forecast of 33 forecasts in a Bloomberg survey was for a drop of 0.1 percent. Public-sector strikes over pensions on Nov. 30 had “some impact” on GDP in the quarter, the statistics office said.
Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said yesterday that policy makers can increase stimulus again if needed to guard against a “renewed severe downturn.” The U.K., the first Group of Seven nation to report fourth-quarter data, may not be the last to report a contraction. Germany’s statistics office estimated GDP fell about 0.25 percent in the period and the International Monetary Fund has forecast a euro-area recession.
That would be Mervyn King, Bank of England Governor. Elizabeth Mountbatten is still preparing for her Diamond Jubilee and Prime Minister David Cameron’s idea of economic stimulus is to give her a $2 or $3 Billion Yacht she doesn’t need and says she doesn’t want.
Now the Wall Street Bull Shill Artists don’t like bad news getting in the way of their Ponzi schemes so there’s been some push back-
The Blame Game: Revisiting "The Most Alarming Chart I’ve Seen All Week"
Louis Basenese, Wall Street Daily
Published Fri, Jan 27th, 2012
Readers responded that I unfairly pegged the three-month, 54.4% drop in the Baltic Dry Index on Europe’s never-ending debt crisis. Instead, readers said I should have also pointed a finger at China.
Well, readers, I admit it: You’re right.
As I noted on Wednesday, China’s economy is decelerating. And as the biggest consumer of raw materials, it’s definitely having an impact on the Baltic Dry Index and global economic activity. In fact, the IMF cut its global GDP forecast this week from 4% to 3.3%.
Shame on me for not blaming China, too. Can you ever forgive me?
But wait! It’s all about the Supply Side!
The supply of bulk ships only increased 8.9% over the last year and 2.8% in the last three months. Do you really think a 2.8% increase in supply is entirely responsible for a 54.4% drop in the Baltic Dry Index over the same time period?
Even if we look at the increase in capacity – which is up 12.7% in the last year and 3.9% in the last three months – there’s no way it’s the only factor sinking the Baltic Dry Index.
And how about that HARPEX?
In the last six months, the number of container ships only increased 0.3% and capacity only increased by 1.9%. Meanwhile, the HARPEX Index is down 46.9% over the same period.
Louis is not the only one noticing this.
Chart of the Day: The Baltic Dry Index
Sebastian Walsh, Financial News
25 Jan 2012
According to (Nick) Bullman (managing partner at risk consultant Check Risks), its initial collapse in October was driven primarily by a fall-off in demand from China, where declining housing prices pushed purchasing managers to cut back on orders for the raw materials whose transport the Baltic Dry Index reflects.
He said: “This collapse looks similar to the falls we saw in the Baltic Dry ahead of the recessions of the late 1970s and early 1990s – but this drop is actually steeper.”
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“US unemployment is in high double digits at moment, not 9% – the way the US government collates the data means the long-term unemployed just fall out of the numbers.”
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Bullman said that shipping companies have also been deliberately slowing down their journeys to save fuel, with trips from China to the US going now taking around 50% longer than they were early in 2011.
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(H)e said he was surprised by how long the Baltic Dry took to fall.
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“What this is signalling is that the world economy is slowing down much more quickly than people have been thinking.”
Even if the problem is over capacity, this is not good news.
Business Insider quoted Basil Karatzas, the chief executive of Karatzas Marine Advisors, as saying European banks could face nearly $100 billion in losses to restructure the $500 billion in shipping loans on their books.
(h/t Lambert Strether @ Naked Capitalism)
Jan 30 2012
Of all foodstuffs, milk is unique in that it provides all of the nutritional needs for infant mammals. In addition to nutrition, it also supplies essential antibodies the first few days to newborns. Milk is unique to mammals, and is one of the reasons that mammals had the evolutionary advantage that they had when they arose during the age of reptiles.
However, humans are also unique in that we are one of the few mammals who continue to take it after infancy, and the only species that continues to take it after adolescence and into adulthood. Milk is far from the perfect food for adults, but certainly can be part of healthy diet.
Humans are also unique in that we are the only species that takes milk in a natural setting from other species. By that I mean that we actively collect it, not like giving the cat a saucer of milk. The nutritive value of milk is species specific, and our habit to taking cows’ milk (for the most part) is quite unnatural.
