13 Saturday Aug 2016
Posted | August 13, 2016 8:48:26 | Economics
Truck shipments continue to dive. Shipments in June of 2016 are down vs. June of 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, and almost but not quite 2010.
Here’s a chart I created from Cass Freight Index data.
A tip of the hat from reader Tim Wallace (and to Cass Information Systems) for the spreadsheet from which I created the chart.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
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Dear Mish: No conclusions?
I guess you’re saying the economy continues to weaken?
Dear @phxfreddyii — I will give you the conclusion.
After three decades of neo-keynesian stupidity in Japan, zero (or defacto zero) rates have solved nothing. The policy just buried Japan in lots of debt, with NO HOPE of ever getting out.
After a decade of that fat monkey Bernanke’s neo-keynesian nonsense, the US economy is in the same sh!t hole, for the same reasons.
Recession is when you lose your job, recovery will start when a US president (whichever one) has the courage to publicly condemn this horrid fat man and his stupid stupid debt binges.
In the meantime, Mish will obsess about rigged Fed Funds futures and how many angels can fit on a needle (hat tip seenitallbefore in previous post).
Really Mish. This has reached a point where you are just damaging your own credibility trying to pretend the Fed has any credibility left.
Whether some corrupt political cronies at money center banks have to pay 25bp or 50bp is not going to have any impact on rates paid by real businesses, nor will it make retirement funding possible.
Your headline should read: Bernanke’s pensions (plural) are still guaranteed by the debt slave citizenry who do not get even one pension.
F U Ben Bernanke.
Here come the white knights … popcorn is in the microwave…
No one is buying into your political correctness crap any longer liberal boy.
F U too
During Japan’s lost decades, the private economy has deleveraged at a rate of 1.8% a year and the GDP has grown an average of 0.8 percent a year despite population decline.
In contrast, during the Obama quasi recovery the US private economy has increased debt at a rate of over 3% per year AND population has increased, but growth has only been around 2%.
When the US private sector returns to net deleveraging, and it will, it’s lights out for the stock market and the US economy.
What I think Mish and a lot of other bears get wrong, however, is the “when”. US private debt to GDP is currently around 205%. That’s nothing. The US private sector could easily keep adding debt until private debt is 300% or so of GDP, thats a whole nother decade of this paper recovery.
Otis, where there is a will there is a way. I bet Hillary could get there in 5 years. Then, when the USA has pockets looking like Libya after the homeland is pulverized, infrastructure spending to rebuild will be proposed. Normally a good boost for an economy, but by then the dollar may not be a reserve currency and maximum debt will make the USA a bad loan bet. The worst is yet to come when the socialist state peaks out and collapses faster than a World Trade Center building during 9-11.
Frank – I don’t know what you’ve been smoking, but implying that Mish thinks the Fed has any credibility at all is pretty pathetic.
Mish keeps doing posts about what asinine thing the Fed is saying or doing — as though it still mattered.
Continued ZIRP is destroying the economy, negative rates would destroy it even faster. Dozens of people much smarter than Yellen or Bernanke or Draghi have told all three of them as much for years.
Rates are going to go up, because 0% is now a threat to the status quo (a lot bigger threat than Trump could ever be).
And assholes like James Greenberg trying to pull this race card bullshit is just going to make the civility situation even worse than it already is.
Go ahead though. Put the crook in the White House, see if she can’t do for women’s lib what Obama did for race relations.
Mish keeps doing posts about what asinine thing the Fed is saying or doing — as though it still mattered.
Continued ZIRP is destroying the economy, negative rates would destroy it even faster. Dozens of people much smarter than Yellen or Bernanke or Draghi have told all three of them as much for years.
Rates are going to go up, because 0% is now a threat to the status quo (a lot bigger threat than Trump could ever be).
And assholes like James Greenberg trying to pull this political correctness race card bullshit is just going to make the civility situation even worse than it already is.
Go ahead though. Put the crook in the White House, see if she can’t do for women’s lib what Obama did for race relations. Maybe she can start some full blown city riots like Obama just did in Milwaukee.
Franks “get’s it”
FU (((Bernake))) indeed…and the rest of the (((cult)))
won’t somebody think of the robot truckers?
And how are the robbers supposed to open the door?
And if they get it open? Where are they going with the truck or the goods?
Won’t police be notified the second the door is forced open?
Sheeesh
Police will be notified, but it will take them 15-20 minutes (at least) to assemble their SWAT teams and enough officers to go into the bad neighborhoods… Police don’t want to get shot just so some politically correct voters can feel good about themselves — they enter bad neighborhoods in force.
By the time they do, the packages that were in the truck are gone. The human driver had his wallet stolen, after the thugs read his home address off his license. If the human driver remembers anything, his family will “get it”.
The police know they can’t respond in time without jeopardizing their own safety. They know the packages and truck are insured (and the insurance companies are starting to catch on to this). Human truck drivers are starting to ask if the risk justifies the reward.
Robot drivers would just get stripped for parts or more likely covered in graffiti (most of the public school drop outs wouldn’t know what else to do)
This is the world both Obamas (Chicago) and both Clintons (hot springs AK) came from
When I did some consulting work for UPS decades ago (corporate side) — I couldn’t understand why UPS was worried about criminals stealing a UPS truck.
No one else has that design, no one else has that shade of brown paint, plus the GPS tracker in the truck…
And the UPS executive said: In bad neighborhoods, our trucks get robbed all the time. They steal the truck, drive it a few blocks away where a gang of idiots are waiting with crowbars to pry open the back doors.
Criminals are just “borrowing” the trucks to steal the Air Jordans and other packages inside. The truck is always found abandoned and empty within an hour or two.
No one robs a post office truck full of bills and dunning notices. They steal UPS and FedEx trucks to get the packages inside.
Welcome to Chicago slums folks — you voted these street vermin into the white house, so now you will live in Chicago slums too.
Drone competition? Tele-transportation? I dunno, the graph seems out of sorts with the way things went since 2009. Here’s a June 2013-2016 graph and, YEP, it’s worser.
http://www.cassinfo.com/~/media/images/transportation-1024/indexes/freight%20index/2016/cass-freight-index-shipments-2013-june-2016.ashx?h=332&&w=390&la=en
dang,I was going to blame drones LOL
maybe self driving trucks aren’t included in the total!
With riots in the Streets and targeted assassinations without any due process perfectly legal then I don’t think it’s a stretch to say “anything you want delivered via drone is also legal..”
I mean seriously….you can be perfectly legal as a police department and start killing every black person in the United States right now.
Every single one…including the President.
So I don’t think you can rule out package delivery either…just drone strike the head of the FAA if he/she has any questions.
This depression has not hit bottom. Several bubble busts are yet to come: student loan defaults, state and city government defaults, auto sales, European PIIGS defaults, Russian bank collapse, Saudi welfare default, Venezuela revolution, retail department store bankruptcies, oil prices, NYTimes, cell phone upgrades….
The inescapable financial cliff that this country will eventually arrive at and drop off the edge is a result of a multitude of acts of criminal financial fraud at the highest levels of government and business that were never appropriately investigated let alone prosecuted. To cover up the dirt they used unprecedented financial gimmicks like TARP, QE, ZIRP, etc… that our forefathers would have scoffed at.
I knew that when the ones in charge turned a blind eye to rule of law as applied to the elite that this country was toast. Now we have a candidate for the highest office in the land who willfully and knowingly placed our country at grave national security risk to serve her own selfish personal interests and the ones in charge again turned a blind eye.
Equality Under the Law was one of the basic fundamental principles that made America better than all the rest. Now it’s gone. And with it goes the backbone that supports the weight of the nation.
It was a nice experiment while it lasted.
On the plus side Sturm Ruger made several improvements to rifle accuracy and introduced the ‘Precision Rifle’. I had my eye on a used Russian Dragunov Sniper Rifle. American ingenuity came through.
@LFOldTimer … +1000
Baltic Dry http://data.cnbc.com/quotes/.BADI is also pretty dry.
Have you looked at the HARPEX as well? I am getting container freight rates I never dreamed of getting as global demand has collapsed. We are near the numbers of 2009 – the only time period in the HARPEX lower than we are right now.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/economic-slump-sends-big-ships-to-scrap-heap-1471192256
How does rail look?
https://www.aar.org/Pages/Freight-Rail-Traffic-Data.aspx#weeklyrailtraffic
Sudden unexpected O’care decline.
Maybe they can’t find anyone to drive the trucks: http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20160810/BLOG107/160819991/truck-driver-shortages-could-threaten-supply-chains
the contraction of the expansion rate of the macro economy continues to accelerate
the rate of economic expansion has slowed to a virtual stop for the vast majority
NO wonder they call it the “Cass Fright Index”!!!
While the left wingers fantasize about Obama’s non-recovery, the new world order is fraying at the seams. The US olympic team just admitted what everyone knew was going to happen.
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/2016-rio-summer-olympics/u-s-swimmer-ryan-lochte-robbed-gunpoint-brazil-n630396
In a country run by corrupt extremist left wing socialists, the people turn to crime. Washington DC is no different from Brasilia.
Leadership sets the tone. Crook in the White House –> crooks burning down Milwaukee and enforcers shooting DNC staffers who might be leaking the family secrets to wikileaks.
Frank I apologize for assuming you had a brain in your head. I’ll explain it to you despite the knowledge that your 30IQ couldn’t possibly comprehend it.
You still with me? Good. The term “white knight” means a loyal follower who rallies to the defense of a blogger who comes under unjustified attack from cretins such as yourself. A cretin is someone with a 30IQ.
Your reflexively ignorant attack on Mish demonstrates that you are not only completely unfamiliar with his ideas and the detailed foundation that underlays them, but that you are exactly the sort of prejudiced troll that you falsely accuse others of being, a practice known to psychologists as projection.
There, I just demonstrated the proper technique of white-knighting. If you understood that, your IQ is now possibly 31. Congratulations douchebag.
BTW, what’s your last name, coward?