Port of no calls
You may have seen pictures of the acres of unpurchased automobiles parked near US shipyards.
By way of Energy Bulletin, referring to the Visualizing Economics blog, referring to Slate's Foreign Policy blog (Visualizing also credits ChartPorn), referring to International Economy, in their Off the News section, we find the above graphic generated by Google Earth's VesselTracker plugin.
The image shows the many container ships anchored near Singapore.
International Economy writes:
The world's busiest port for container traffic, Singapore saw its year-over-year volume drop by 19.6 percent in January 2009, followed by a 19.8 percent drop in February. As of mid-March 2009, 11.3 percent of the world's shipping capacity, sat idle, a record.
Foreign Policy writes:
It's a rough time to be an Asian tiger, or to be in the shipping business. The IMF projects that Singapore's economy will shrink significantly in 2009. Globally, bulk shipping rates have dropped more than 80 percent in the past year on weak demand, and orders for new shipping vessels are cratering. In Busan, South Korea, the fifth-largest port in the world, empty shipping containers are piling up faster than officials can manage.
"Things have really started to get bad -- laborers spend their entire day waiting for a call from the docks that they have a job," Kim Sang Cheul, a dockworker at Busan, told Bloomberg. "People spend all day staring at their phone as if staring at it can make it ring. You're lucky if you get a call."
Wow.
May 27, 2009 11:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
A record. Holy shit.
Sorry for the language, it's just...
Thank you for this, Donal. Thank you for continuing to post about energy when so few of us do anymore. You're a needed voice here.
May 27, 2009 11:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well Donal, I am no economist, Obey likes to remind me of that...
But this does not look good to me. Something goes rotten thousands of sea miles away, and it affects us.
Looks scary to me!!
May 27, 2009 11:03 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think back to Sharon Astyk's construct of a world economy pyramid, the base of which is on the backs of those that have left the farms to become unskilled laborers earning a small wage. If they can no longer earn that wage, there are a lot of products that will go unsold, a lot of middle men that won't skim a profit and a lot of first world corporations that will cut back.
May 27, 2009 11:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
And a lot of people who will go hungry. At least the farm could feed it's farmers when times were tough without providing any money, but this?
It would be interesting to note exactly what kind of stuff is not moving. I doubt it is much food because of the perishable nature of food. Even frozen food has a lifespan and no one stopped eating. So are the products to which we are saying no? Is much of this wood and construction materials?
May 28, 2009 11:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
More like the converse. Something went rotten here, (our ability or desire to purchase imported goods), and it's affecting people on the other side of the world.
May 27, 2009 11:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
Donal, this is scary. What is the world coming to? Thanks for the info.
May 27, 2009 11:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Any idea what the normal percentage of the shipping industry that sits idle is?
May 27, 2009 11:30 PM | Reply | Permalink
No, I'd probably have to find a paper copy of International Economy, but Bloomberg is grim about Asia:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601101&sid=a9RGYPeMU8Ok&refer=japan
May 28, 2009 6:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Wow. That graphic puts the words into perspective, doesn't it? That's amazing.
May 27, 2009 11:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
One wonders if the Somalis use Vessel Tracker?
May 28, 2009 7:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I kind of wondered how this would impact Pirate, Inc's bottom line...
Arrrrrrr
May 28, 2009 7:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
hmmmmmmmmm
May 28, 2009 9:27 AM | Reply | Permalink
According to World Trade Volume Falls 11.3 Percent, that was the decline in 1Q'09 versus 4Q'08.
It would be a 38% / year annualized rate of decline.
Of course, its likely that the drop wasn't as steep in 2Q'09, but that data isn't available yet. China seems to be picking up imports of raw materials.
However, there is still an unwillingness to ship goods to the US in exchange for second mortgages on our houses.
May 28, 2009 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
http://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/ft900.pdf shows a graph indicating that US imports and exports peaked about July 2008.
Imports are down from about $230 billion/month to about $151 billion/month in March 2009, a drop of roughly 34%.
Exports are down from about $164 billion/month to about $124 billion/month in March 2009, a drop of roughly 24%.
The good news is that the trade deficit being run by the US has shrunk fairly dramatically, since foreigners are no longer willing to fund our over-consumption.
May 28, 2009 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
What it all adds up to is that every sign contradicts what the more official economic prognostications are coming out of Washington. On the slightest hopeful news officialdom in DC and in NYC have been trying to convince people that there are signs the economy will pull out of this nose dive later in the year, perhaps in the third quarter.
Now, I could be wrong and hope I am, but let's consider the news we've been getting lately and see if that adds up to anything even remotely close to ending this recession by the third quarter of 2010.
Chrysler just went bankrupt and it appears GM is right behind them. The immediate negative impact is more psychological than anything else, but the real negative effects of bills that don't get paid, subcontractors that go out of business as a result of the bankruptcies, and the enormous numbers of workers who get laid off have yet to appear and don't figure into the very gloomy statistical pictures we've been seeing since last fall. If anything, when the real effects of the bankruptcies begin to be felt there could be another very serious downward trend across the board economically.
While new job losses slowed a tad in the past month, ongoing unemployment claims are rising. There is nothing good about this news at all. We're still talking about job losses in the vicinity of 600,000 monthly and few of the unlucky unemployed are finding any kind of jobs so that they can get back to work. This is extraordinarily bad news. 600,000 more unemployed monthly folks! That's armegeddon for 600,000 families each month.
The destruction of employment promises to have many negative impacts but one of the worst is a renewed and more severe mortgage foreclosure crisis. The Republican wing of the Democratic Party represented by Summers and Geithner have done absolutely nothing to assist people in keeping their homes. Zip. Nada. Zilch! So, when all these people whove lost their jobs and who have always been excellent credit risks start defaulting becuase of their lack of employment we are going to see the current 10,000 foreclosures daily get even worse. Instead of being on their hands and knees servicing the crooked bankers of Wall Street, Geithner and Summers should have been doing something to help the common people who make this world go round. But, being Republicans, they don't see any need for that and when they finally wake up and realize it isn't all about their rich friends it may be waaaaaay too late.
The negative shockwaves of the ongoing collapse of the economy contradict the optimistic statements being made in the past few days by the President and his underlings. If we are to believe our eyes, not only are they wrong, they are very wrong. Things are getting worse each day and our leaders in Washington are wasting valuable time in terms of preparig for the massive onslaught of unemployment, ongoing business bankruptices and collapses, bank failures and foreclosures.
Hold on tight folks, cause the fun is just beginning even though our clueless economic and government leaders are acting otherwise.
May 28, 2009 5:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
thanks for your point of view on all this Oleeb. I don't know enough about economics to make a sensible assessment of how much worse things will get. But all you have to do is look around--friends unemployed, local stores out of business, places like Home Depot and Lowe's pretty much empty, no one's buying cars or mid to high end electronics--restaurants aren't as busy, summer rentals down, insurance costs still going up.
Facts and prognostications dispatched from DC and the financial sector do seem perpetually detached from this reality--new accounting rules allow banks to hide losses in future quarters.
I feel better with Obama in office but in general, I still don't feel government is working for me.
May 28, 2009 7:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
There is nothing official about the economy: if enough people think the economy is bad, it becomes worse; if enough people think the economy is good, it becomes better.
May 28, 2009 7:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Very true. But it is also true that if enough people are actually losing their jobs and enough businesses are actually closing, it really is bad and getting worse. I think that is where we are right now.
May 28, 2009 9:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, well, I never understood the "uh-oh, looks like economy is getting worse, let's fire a bunch of people SO NO-ONE WILL HAVE MONEY TO BUY OUR STUFF" approach.
May 28, 2009 10:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think it has to do with not having the cash flow, or credit, to make payroll.
I've had two firms that asked me to accept less money for a while. In the late 70s one guy paid me for two days a week to stay home until things picked up. And in the late 80s another firm gathered us all together and cut us to three day weeks (whereupon my GF left me). But most places just let people go.
After I married into a family with a lot of railroad employees, I found that layoffs and callbacks were a normal part of life. Families would eat a lot of pancakes and men fixed up their houses until the shops got busy again.
May 29, 2009 1:16 PM | Reply | Permalink