Tag Archives: Commerce

Covid-19: Global Retrenchment Will Obliterate Sales, Profits and Yes, Big Tech, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on February 20, 2020 | 1 comment

We’re just now seeing the economic effects of the coronavirus, but whether it’s truly a pandemic or an overblown scare fanned by governments and the media, those effects will be substantial. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

If you think global demand will rebound as global debt and confidence implode, you better not be making consequential decisions based on Euphorestra-addled magical thinking.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the global economy was slowing for two reasons: 1) everybody who can afford it already has it and 2) overcapacity. One word captures the end-of-the-cycle stagnation: saturation.

Everyone who can afford a smartphone (or can borrow to buy one) already has one. Everyone who can afford an auto loan already has a car. Everyone who could afford an overpriced house already bought one. Everyone who can afford a tablet or laptop already has one. And so on.

This saturation isn’t just in the consumer market–the corporate market is equally saturated. Corporations leased too much space, bought more cloud services than needed, increased headcount willy-nilly, and increased capacity just as the market for their goods and services stagnated from global saturation of markets and debt.

Paint-daubed members of the Keynesian Cargo Cult (paging Chief Humba-Humba Paul Krugman) love to claim that “debt doesn’t matter” but in their frenzied dance around the campfire they ignore one little feature of debt: interest. In a world in which money is borrowed into existence, all new money issuance and all new debt (the same thing) accrues interest.

And as Japan has proven, even if the interest rate is near-zero, if you borrow relentlessly enough, the interest due even on near-zero interest rates soon dominates your entire income.

The Keynesian Cargo Cult, busy with their rock radios (the dials are painted on), ignore the sad reality that marginal borrowers default because they can’t afford to make the principal payments, never mind the interest, and the inevitable result is cascading defaults throughout the financial system.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Posted in Business, Debt, Economy, Governments, Medicine, Politics, Science

Tagged , , ,

Global Shipping Veers into Capital Destruction, by Wolf Richter

Posted on October 9, 2015 | Leave a comment

From Wolf Richter at wolfstreet.com:

Overcapacity “will be even greater than in 2009.”

“I would be open to the possibility” of reducing the fed funds rate “even further” and go negative, explained Minneapolis Fed President Narayana Kocherlakota on Thursday. Some folks just don’t get it.

Here are the results of seven years of global QE and zero-interest-rate policies:

Global demand is going from sluggish to even more sluggish. Emerging market countries are leading the way, it is said, and China is sneezing. Brazil and Russia have caught pneumonia. Japan is feeling the hangover from Abenomics. Even if there is some growth in Europe, it’s small. And the US, “cleanest dirty shirt” as it’s now called, is getting bogged down.

And here’s what this is doing to the shipping industry, the thermometer of global economic growth.

On one side: lack of demand.

Due to the “recent slowdown in world trade” shipping consultancy Drewry on Thursday slashed its forecast for container shipping growth, in terms of volume, to 2.2% for 2015 and lowered its estimates for future years. BIMCO, the largest international shipping association representing shipowners, issued its own, even gloomier report also on Thursday:

On the US West Coast, it’s been slow all year, starting with the labor disputes that weren’t resolved until mid-March. Since then, year-on-year growth in the second quarter was almost on par with 2014. But for the first half year alone, inbound loaded volumes dropped by 2% according to BIMCO data.

On the Asia to Europe trades, volumes were down by 4.2% in the first half of the year as 7.4 million TEU (Twenty-foot container Equivalent Units) was transported. Northern European imports fell by 3.6%, while the East Med and Black Sea imports fell by 4.8%.

Intra-Asia shipments remain a stronghold with ongoing positive growth around 4-5%, but the increased uncertainty surrounding the economic development in China adds doubt as to whether such a strong growth rate can be sustained for the full year.

At the same time, as shipping volumes struggle, freight rates have collapsed, and revenues with them.

“The severe lack of exports from China” is reflected in the China Containerized Freight Index (CCFI), BIMCO pointed out. The index, which tracks freight rates from China to major ports around the world, plunged below 800 in early July for the first time in its history (it was set at 1,000 in 1998). It’s currently at 814. The red line marks 800:

To continue reading: Global Shipping Veers into Capital Destruction

Leave a comment

Posted in Economics, Economy, Other Views

Tagged ,