Posted on 05/13/2009 8:04:48 PM PDT by BobS
The Dow may have risen in anticipation of a recovery, but rail car loadings, usually a reliable indicator of economic activity, tell a different story. Jack McHugh, writing at The Big Picture, examines a 24 page Credit Suisse report on rail car loadings and summarizes:
"Bottom Line: Last week proved no different than the last 4: railroad carloads were down more than 20%. Week 17 saw a year-over-year volume shortfall of 21.6% - which is slightly worse than the 20.4% drop in Week 16.
...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
There are days when woke I up in silence. Yes, you can hear those train horns from 4 miles when it's totally silent.
Match this with the idling of international shipping with all those container ships at anchor and you have a 1984 scenario.
They tell you everything is fine when you know it is not.
The local short line, a subsidiary of CSX, has parked rotary hopper cars on a siding that I’ve never seen cars on in 15 years. The cars have been there for several months.
It doesn’t even need to be totally silent.
I used to hear them at night from about 4-5 miles away as a kid and the I-80 interstate was about half way between me and the tracks. It was deathly silent where I was, but it sure wasn’t deathly silent on I-80. And no, I couldn’t hear I-80.
This article I found on American thinker made me realize why I don’t hear those horns. Read the links in the original article. Nothing is moving. Truckers must be hurting.
16 of the 21 “SuperCape ships in the world are sitting IDLE off Singapore right now.
Baltic Dry Index is still nearly at zero.
Steel Production is a FORWARD INDICATOR of economic health as much as a year out, and Mittal Steel just laid off 2,000 today, and idled it’s Georgetown Plant. The Burns Harbor Plant is working at just 40% of capacity.
And with the Mittal shutdowns (One of the biggest Rail Users in America), car loadings are going to drop even further.
WE ARE SO SCREWED, and the Democrats are trying to twist the blade on us...
No, it is not fine.
I’m just now starting to see signs of things that make me a little nervous. I started seeing them about 2 weeks ago, although I was hearing rumors as far back as december. If the current trends keep up, we are going to see really scary stuff in about 6-10 months. That’s my prediction. Semi scary stuff around the end of the summer.
But I really don’t expect to see current trends keep up. I fully expect the downward slide to level off in about 2 months, and then hold there for 6 months minimum.
On the other side of the State a few weeks ago, I drove by what I presume is scrapyard of sorts..there are usually a few old pieces of equipment and cars sitting there. This time: dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of containers stacked up in rows.
Between Helena MT and Great Falls, there are thousands of idle empty container rail cars sitting on the tracks, and have been there for at least a year.
The truckers I work with say that freight is very slow, there was no pickup from the usually slow Jan/Feb. period, and they are hurting. Also, shippers are taking advantage of the situation, by offering freight that pays $1 or less per mile, sometimes less than $.50 per mile, unheard of for at least 20 years.
The truckers I know lost their jobs last year and moved on to new careers at least 2 months ago.
All of them.
They lost their homes. And their marriages fell apart shortly after. Practically immediately after.
I’m in CA. And (used to)drive to Vegas once in a while. Between Mohave and Barstow there were long trains next to the 15 fwy up there. I would guess there are cars parked on the sidings up there empty.
Probably the toughest job in the world on family life is cross country driving.
That’s the real picture I suspected was occuring. You are seeing what I thought was going on.
Are those grain cars? That would not be good.
What do you see that can hold it there? Everything that I see is on the verge of collapse. Wharehouses are emptying out, and not being refilled. Nobody is ordering ahead. Commercial real estate loans are going into default at an accelerating rate. Fast food restaurants, which usually hold up well in recessions, are cutting back, and many are closing all together.
I agree, and the MSM will pay for their lies. Remember under GWB we had 4 to 5 percent unemployment, and a GDP that grew 3 percent annually, and the MSM declared we had the worst economy since the Depression. Today unemployment is soaring up to 8.9 percent (and growing), GDP shrunk by 6 percent, and the MSM declares we have an economic recovery!!!!
The government is starting a new financial bubble, it is call the bailout bubble financed by low interest rates and printing of new dollars. Unlike the mortgage bubble, when the bailout bubble bursts the government has no means to bailout the investors and institutions caught in it.
IMHO, I don’t believe ANY of the numbers we see in the MSM today. They were printing, in 2006-2007 , when unemployment was less than 5% and inflation less than 3%, that it was the worst economy since the Great Depression. Now, in the face of numbers they acknowledge and publish, unemployment is only 8%?! These folks are so busy giving Obama sunshine enemas that I suspect its really closer to 12%...ever since the Democrats started running Congress in 2006.
I assume they are just parked out there because they aren't needed to haul freight around right now. The grain here usually gets transferred out in grain cars...or tankers if it's been made into oil or ethanol, of course.
Yes, and it has gotten so ridiculously large that it has flushed the dollar down the tiolet this week. I can’t see anything coming out of the WH or the Fed that can turn it around now. First it’ll be bottomless deflation, then splat! Then mind boggling inflation. You’ll need a 3/4 ton PU to haul the cash to the empty market.
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