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Scary Economic News
So far I was on the opinion side of 'a big global recession'. I now officially move into the 'massive global depression' camp. These numbers are huge. But what is really scary are not the huge numbers but the speed at which the occcure. That speed is unprecedented. It may turn this beast globally into something very different, i.e. much worse, than the Great Depression the U.S. had in the 1930s.
The cars of that time made some 30 miles per hour. The recent modern globalized economy car, financed by zero-rate credit, made some 200+ miles per hour. It now ran into a human wall at full speed. While the modern car has some safety belts that protect the drivers, the damage for the crowd the car ran into will likely be much bigger than in the earlier crash.
Kenya hit by drought, food prices and grain shortage
Field
after field of maize across the marginal agricultural areas of Kenya
stands blitzed by the tropical sun, unable to mature after the rains
failed. For many, this is the third consecutive failed harvest.
Cancellations exceed orders at both Airbus and Boeing
Both Airbus and Boeing have dipped into negative net orders for the year to date, having suffered more cancellations than secured sales.
South Korean Exports Fall by Record, China Manufacturing Slumps
South Korea’s shipments fell 32.8 percent from a year earlier, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy said. Manufacturing in China shrank for a sixth month, the CLSA China Purchasing Managers’ Index showed.
Japan output falls at record pace, unemployment rises
The government also said that production is expected to decrease 9.1% in January and 4.7% in February, according to its Survey of Production Forecast in Manufacturing.
If the projected cuts materialize, Japan's industrial output would have shrunk by one-third over the space of a year, according to calculations by J.P. Morgan. The contraction effectively knocks Japan's industrial economy back to roughly the size it was in the mid-to-late 1980s.
German industrial orders fall sharply
Germany’s economic ministry reported orders fell by 6.9 per cent in December, extending a 5.3 per cent fall in November. It was the fourth consecutive monthly fall and much larger than expected. December’s industrial orders from within the eurozone were tumbled by more than 15 per cent.
..
Earlier, Spain had reported a record 19.6 per cent fall in industrial output in the year to December as businesses and households reeled from the collapse of the country’s housing bubble.
Payrolls plunge by 598,000, the most since 1974
Nonfarm
payrolls fell by a seasonally adjusted 598,000 in January, on the heels
of a revised loss of 577,000 in December, the [U.S.] government said.
IDLE CONTAINER FLEET REACHES 675,000 TEUS
The
number of laid-up container ships reached 255 vessels by mid-January as
the global economic downturn forces carriers to continue to retrench.
The idle ships have a capacity of 675,000 TEUs. That represents 5.5
percent of the world container shipping fleet by capacity, according to
AXS-Alphaliner, a Paris-based consultant.
…
The situation will only get worse for the carriers as
deliveries of new ships will swell the world fleet about 14 percent
this year, Alphaliner said.
China suffering worst drought in 50 years
Since November northern and central China has had little rain. Many places have not had rainfall for more than 100 days.
..
"The extent of drought is quite extensive, the impact is quite great," forecaster Zhang Peiqun said in an interview with state television CCTV. "Rainfall on average has been 50 to 80 percent less than that of last year."
rapt 10) we did that in the ’70’s much worse recession than now, ‘back to the land’ back when you could lease farmland, not today, back to the land when you could buy used farm equipment or borrow your neighbor’s, not today, back when you could farm without the State crawling up your bunghole about stream setbacks and till-less farming and bother herbicides, ‘why don’t you boys invest in hoes’. 40 acres we leased, and rented 20 more, and grew plenty of food, if you like eating chapatis everyday, and drowning in sun-dried zucchini bread, and roasting and grinding and baking with a wood stove by fuel oil lantern. we ended up growing pot and moving back to the city, selling Mexican chillums over the counter in the farmer’s market, and ‘come back later tonight’ homegrown under the counter, and still we all had to find regular jobs just to have seed money, fertilizer, fuel, herbicides, all those things that city folks with no idea about farming imagine they can do without. try plowing 60 acres with a single bottom between when the ground is dry enough to work in the spring, and when it sets to near concrete once the rains have stopped. try harvesting 60 acres with an old belt combine, storm clouds on the horizon and half of it already lodged. many folks still believe you can live on an urban greenhouse and fish pond but the facts are that fish farming is non-profitable with less than 10 acres under roof in the north and double that in ponds in the south, and you still haven’t sold a single fish and your feed is rotting without refrigeration. it’s all a hobby, face it, you can live on your urban lot and grow organic celery under a 1000W grow light setup, but you’d be a stone fool to. look at worm farmers, mushroom farmers, landscape nurseries, pig pens, organic salad gardens, all the concentrated suburban farming ideas are getting slammed by rising costs and falling markets and taxes. there’s a huge oversupply of food in the industrial world, we are a black hole, don’t waste your money on land and property taxes and equipment, buy in bulk direct from farmers, a sack of wheat, sack of beans and a container of dried vegetables costs less than a single month’s cell phone bill! concentrate on turning the lamp down, flushing the toilet less, living with more people in less space. where they’re going to get you isn’t the food supply, it’s the sales taxes, property taxes and huge utility bills. they’ll drive you off your property with tax auctions, then you’re fookted, doomed to wander the earth with the rest. don’t make the mistake of thinking you can go ‘back to the land’, just look at the iceland shakinah, or french vintners, or british livestockers, brazil pounded back to zero gdp, you need to focus on finding as much cash as you can and reducing your burn rate, there will always be more food than people can consume in industrial society.
Posted by: Chéri Optera | Feb 7 2009 5:33 utc | 36
hoss 34) what cheney did to iraq was deliberate oil supply destruction, the peak oil boys are bad-faith-based cons who never took an economics class in their lives and wouldn’t know price sensitivity or margin saturation if it bit them on the ass. cheney saw chindia rising and knew rising economies have rising demands that run inevitably into capped wages, as ehrlich would say, into the limiting resource, the cost of oil distribution, the invisible hand of the market, the short sellers, the fee men, landlords. cheney knew chindia would florish and bloom then strangulate and oil economy would crash, so he engineered the war, engineered destruction of the cheapest oil on the planet, saddam’s oil, took his $500M oil spike profits and forgad abahd et in dubai, or whatever rock he crawled under. and they’re all the same, they read from the same playbook, they’re not stupid, grant them that. wall street knows every penny that everyone puts away, they knew the party was over on credit, cars, housing, toys, the limiting resource was worker income, they knew a crash was coming, so they ARM’d themselves and offered obscene credit swindles and did to housing what cheney did to oil, got their $7T profits out and faghed abahd et in the bahamas, or whatever rock madoff tried to crawl under. there are very few limiting resources left to swindle now. we’ve lost $17T in equity to the Bushkers. we’re mold that’s outrun it’s petri dish, liquefying into bacterial ooze. we’re immuno-suppressed aids victims, our skin suppurating with sores and cancres. we’re elephants walking the serengheti of kenya, bones sticking from crepe paper skin, searching for that last drop of water. really, face it, it was just ‘business’, a science like any other. they won, they took their winnings. we lost, get over it. ‘the current economic conditions’ won’t be used to do anything, there’s no point in even sticking around. the corn is dead, husks broken open, sun blackened shriveled seed spilled on the cracked earth. van gogh’s crows. it’s poliburo vers prols now, politburo feasting on taxes like worms at a banquet, swelling the ranks of the disenfranchished, unemployed, homeless, cellphoneless. it’s desiderata time.
Posted by: Chéri Optera | Feb 7 2009 6:04 utc | 37
There has been no or little ‘growth’ in the west for 20 years. It thus became necessary to exploit cheap, slave, labor abroad and tighten military and diplomatic domination.
Neo-colonialism, humanitarian war, ‘globalization’, IMF robbery, etc. I associate all this to peak fossil fuels, or even Net Peak Energy, if anyone could calculate it. Rising population, too.
The finance ‘industry’ so called, thus turned into a betting hall, going for a last glorious spree, its actors fleecing anyone who could be duped, cashing in before the house of cards tumbled. This sortie was based on debt, that is the expectation of future growth, which is now, finally, shown to be a fiction.
That is one way of looking at it.
Another is simpler: the slow and steady rise of a predator class, in corporations, gvmt., finance, the media, and a booming, blooming illegal or invisible (not informal) economy: drugs – arms – slaves – contraband – fraudulent finance, held up by coercion, minimal growth, freakonomics and Mafiosi-type power.
Seen under this angle, we note the failure of ‘democracy’ and ‘capitalism’ as compared to their stated aims and advantages. Perhaps this was an inevitable result of practically free energy and post WWII expansion – population, science, technology, infrastructure, the green revolution, etc. In times of plenty, the common good gives way to individualism, a consumerist society (necessary to drive expansion), and the sacrosanct mantra of competition leads to an adversial culture, waste, exploitation (of ppl, of the environment) lack or coordination, and zero planning.
If this vision has merit, the future is stark: proto-fascism and war.
(Even more basic: humans are greedy and brainy, thus their very essence is powerful and manipulative, and they will end up getting their comeuppance from Nature…)
Anyway, once the unwinding begins, as growth is kaput, the effects ricochet and cascade all thru the now-global system. Ppl keep muttering about how the banks should lend, offer credit, but how can they as growth has come to a halt? When that ‘growth’ was largely pinned on financial hijinks, on perpetually sending the IOU notes elsewhere, ponzi style?
don’t mourn, organise– r giap
Posted by: Tangerine | Feb 7 2009 16:05 utc | 45
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