By Michael Snyder – End Of The American Dream
If the global economy is in fine shape, then why does all of the hard data tell us that global trade is absolutely collapsing? The Baltic Dry Index has fallen below 300 for the first time ever, and export numbers are way down for almost every major exporting nation on the entire planet. As you will see below, this includes China. The Chinese account for more global trade than anyone else, and so the fact that their imports and their exports are both collapsing precipitously is a huge red flag. When less stuff is being bought and sold and shipped around the world, that tells us that the “real economy” is contracting. Tremendous efforts are being made to try to prop up financial markets all over the globe right now, but in the end those efforts are going to prove to be rather futile. The global economy is clearly plunging into recession, and at this point it is becoming exceedingly difficult for even the most optimistic economic analysts to deny this reality.
When the trade numbers for China for the month of January were released, they were an extreme disappointment. The following comes from CNBC…
China‘s exports fell 11.2 percent on-year in January, while imports declined 18.8 percent, clocking far bigger slides than expected by analysts.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected a 1.9 percent drop in January exports, and a 0.8 percent drop in imports, after China’s exports fell 1.4 percent in December from a year earlier and imports slid 7.6 percent .
We never see numbers like this outside of a recession.
Never.
Chinese imports have now fallen for 15 months in a row, and the second largest economy on the entire planet appears to be in the process of imploding. As I mentioned above, China has become the most important hub for global trade. Nobody accounts for more total trade than they do, and so these new numbers can only be described as catastrophic.
Other numbers are telling the same story. Global trade has fallen so dramatically that it is now cheaper to rent a 1,100 foot merchant vessel that than it is to rent a Ferrari…
About the author:
Michael T. Snyder is a graduate of the University of Florida law school and he worked as an attorney in the heart of Washington D.C. for a number of years.
Today, Michael is best known for his work as the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog and The American Dream.
Read his new book The Beginning of the End
Survival World News 