[deMolay]

Export and Manufacturing collapse at speed not seen since the Great Depression, anxiety and fear spread globally. http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/20/ ... shrink.php

[PWALPOCO]

deMolay - The data that the article mentions was due in today have been published, a BBC news article can be found here

Basically the European industrial output numbers arent looking too clever, with the EU output falling 2.9% in January against the month before. Looks like Q1 2009 figures are going to be very dire indeed!

Certainly seems all the stories of idle containers,lorries, trains and ships are starting to reflect back to the real numbers.

Paul

[eXpat]

A picture is worth a thousand words

The following chart shows World Merchandise Export Values and World Industrial Production falling off a cliff. This is the worst such period since the end of World War II. And as the data we will examine next indicates, it is likely to get worse. Simon notes that consumer spending is about 60% of world GDP, and it is not just in the US that spending is slowing down. Consumers all over the developed world are in shock, as assets such as stocks and houses, real estate, and commodities fall in value. Unemployment is rising.

We think that almost 2,000,000 lost jobs in the last three months in the US is a catastrophe. China lost a reported 20,000,000 jobs in the last quarter, and migrant workers came back to the cities after Chinese New Year to find factories and jobs simply gone. Unemployment is rising rapidly in Europe, as the demand for goods has clearly been falling since last October.

http://www.safehaven.com/article-12608.htm

Some say that manufacturing is special, because the rest of the economy depends on it. In fact, the economy is more like a network in which everything is connected to everything else, and in which every producer is also a consumer. The important distinction is not between manufacturing and services, but between productive and unproductive jobs.

http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13144864&source=hptextfeature

[patience]

I've been seeing this for a LONG time. In 1970, I worked for Delco Electronics Div. of GM, where execs told us in a management meeting that GM would NEVER go offshore for labor. They had a semiconductor plant being built in Singapore as they spoke, which opened the following year. (The check is in the mail, etc.) By 1974, a friend and I had decided that with manufacturing going to find the cheapest labor, the result would be wages seeking a levelling like water seeking its' own level.

At that time, much was being made of the "new service economy" in the US. I never could understand how we could maintain a high standard of living in the US by selling hamburgers, doing hair styling, and washing cars for each other. When everyone has a minimum wage or lesser job, who buys what we still manufacture? My friend went to work for Hewlett Packard, and I bought a small farm. Neither one of us are in manufacturing today, and Delco Electronics made the news last month with record setting layoffs.

I expected the US standard of living to fall long ago, but it has been held up for so long only by spending our grandkids' inheritance. If manufacturing returns to the US in the future, I think it will be a bunch of alley shops with us old farts running some junk machines that we still understand, but for a pittance for our work. Like what my boss saw in Japan 30 years ago, where parts suppliers operated in cubbyhole shops run by family members.

I cringe every time I get an auction flyer in the mail. Up until last year, it was all machine shops going out of business. Now, it's factories, and big ones. Delco Moraine is closing it's brake plant in Dayton, OH, Reliance Electric (electric motors) in Madison, IN, Tokheim (gas pumps) in Fort Wayne, and Crawfordsville (?), IN, Nutone (doorbells) in Cinn, OH,----the list goes on and on. They are gone. And they ain't coming back.

Still, I can't convince people what the future is going to look like. They are scared, all right, but they are deer-in-the-headlights paralyzed, without a clue about how to get out of the way of the oncoming crash.

[the48thronin]

By Fu Chenghao | 2009-3-19 |


http://shipchartering.blogspot.com/2009/03/steeling-for-80-export-drop.html

CHINA'S steel product exports may tumble 80 percent this year as a global slump hurts demand, the China Iron and Steel Association said yesterday.
This was much steeper than its previous forecast of 50 percent, the industry group said in a statement on its Website quoting a speech by its Secretary-General Shan Shanghua.
A survey showed China's 28 largest steel exporters would ship only 299,100 tons this month and 129,600 tons in April, and China would probably become a net importer of steel products in March, it said.
"The export situation is extremely severe," Shan warned.
Shipments slumped 52 percent in the first two months this year, after dropping 5.5 percent to 59.23 million tons in 2008.
Sluggish exports had led to rising inventories after many mills restarted their once-closed capacities before the Spring Festival holiday in late January as they bet demand would rebound after the holiday. But demand stayed slack and the domestic benchmark price has fallen 14 percent since February, ending a short-lived recovery.
Steel stocks had risen 38 percent to 6.7 million tons by late February in China's 20 major cities from January, Shan said.
"A short-lived prosperity in steel demand, driven by heavy restocking by traders, no longer exists," he said.
On March 5, the domestic steel composite price declined to a low last seen in November, which was also the worst since 1994.
"Market prices may keep falling by small degrees in the short term, but the downward room is limited as prices are already at a low level and demand would gradually recover," Everybright Securities analyst Ding Xianda wrote.
China's 71 major mills posted an aggregate loss of 1.06 billion yuan (US$155 million) in January, much improved from December's loss of 29.1 billion yuan. But losses in February and March could extend from January, according to Shan.

[mcgowanjm]

Export and Manufacturing collapse at speed not seen since the Great Depression, anxiety and fear spread globally. http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/03/20/ ... shrink.php

For their own safety, all foreign nationals, including journalists, tourists, and Russian mobsters should leave Wall Street immediately.

Many New Yorkers can hear me tonight in a translated radio broadcast, and I have a message for them: If we must begin a military campaign, it will be directed against the lawless men who rule your financial district and not against you.

As our coalition takes away their power, we will deliver the food and medicine you need. We will tear down the apparatus of terror and we will help you to build a new Wall Street that is prosperous and free....

... Free nations have a duty to defend our people by uniting against depraved oligarchs who clearly don’t give a shit about anyone or anything but their personal wealth and power and who have done such damage to our world economic system already, and, tonight, as we have done before, America and our allies accept that responsibility.

Good night, and may God continue to bless America.


*(This post made with 85% recycled material taken directly from the Dear Leader’s 2003 Reichstag Address pre-Iraqi invasion speech.)

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/ 8D