International Shipping Shuts Down; Baltic Dry Index Freefalling

International cargo vessels today are all docked and anchored in most seaports all over the world, and the last trips they may have had were for the December holidays shopping spree.
As of yesterday, the most prominent global indicator for international shipment of physical goods, the London-based Baltic Dry Index, is in free fall.

For the last six months or so, most cargo container ships were already sailing with less than their full capacity.
The physical economy is crashing and all the warnings that’s been relayed to you for the last four years should have prepared you for what’s to come in the interim.
There may be a short disruption on the supply of critical goods and services especially on areas that are fully industrialized.

“Today, Monday, January 18 2016, the Baltic Dry Index decreased by 4 points, reaching 369 points.

Baltic Dry Index is compiled by the London-based Baltic Exchange and covers prices for transported cargo such as coal, grain and iron ore. The index is based on a daily survey of agents all over the world. Baltic Dry hit a temporary peak on May 20, 2008, when the index hit 11,793. The lowest level ever reached was on Monday, January 18 2016, when the index dropped to 369 points.”

Source: Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide

“The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index, which tracks rates for ships carrying industrial commodities, continued its freefall to close at a record low on Tuesday amid concerns over vessel oversupply and global demand shortage.

The overall index, which gauges the cost of shipping dry bulk cargoes including iron ore, cement, grain, coal and fertiliser, fell for the 11th straight session and was down six points, or 1.63 percent, at 363 points.

The index has plunged 115 points or around 24 percent in January.

The capesize, panamax, supramax, and handysize indices also continued their downward spiral and touched their all time lows on Tuesday.

The dry bulk sector has taken a beating from the slowdown in Chinese business at a time when the sector is struggling with huge overcapacity.

The capesize index fell 12 points, or 6.09 percent, to 185 points. Average daily earnings for capesize vessels decreased by $68 to a new record low of $2,662.

Capesizes typically transport 150,000-tonne cargoes such as iron ore and coal and have been particularly affected by a fall-off in coal and iron ore demand in China.

The panamax index fell 6 points to 369 points.

Average daily earnings for panamaxes, which usually carry coal or grain cargoes of about 60,000 to 70,000 tonnes, fell $47 to $2,952.”

http://www.hellenicshippingnews.com/baltic-index-tumbles-further-over-demand-worries/

This unfolding event in the physical economy is reminiscent of the event back in the early part of 2012 when CEOs of global banking resigned en masse.

This is one more proof that the plan to end the Great Con Game perpetrated by the Khazarian Mafia for centuries will be terminated this year as much as possible.
Earlier, China had instructed its banks to stop buying US dollar and instead gradually unload its dollar reserves. The Chinese Central Bank also demanded that the Yuan will be the only currency they will accept and honor from hereon, with the exception only where sovereign currency swap agreements are in effect. This means that those countries which don’t have such similar arrangement with China will suffer financially unless their currencies are proven to be backed up with hard assets.
This is a very smart move of ridding out the imaginary wealth of Western Oligarchy, and  event like this is not something the Khazarian co-opted mainstream media would like to talk about.
More evidence of the shutdown of international shipping from ZeroHedge,

“Nothing Is Moving,” Baltic Dry Index Crashes as Insiders Warn International “Commerce Has Come To a Halt”

By Tyler Durden
economy-crisis
The continued collapse of The Baltic Dry Index remains ignored by most – besides we still have Netflix, right? But, as Dollar Vigilante’s Jeff Berwick details, it appears the worldwide ‘real’ economy has ground to a halt!!
Last week, I received news from a contact who is friends with one of the biggest billionaire shipping families in the world.  He told me they had no ships at sea right now, because operating them meant running at a loss.
This weekend, reports are circulating saying much the same thing: The North Atlantic has little or no cargo ships traveling in its waters. Instead, they are anchored. Unmoving. Empty.
You can see one such report here.  According to it,

“Commerce between Europe and North America has literally come to a halt. For the first time in known history, not one cargo ship is in-transit in the North Atlantic between Europe and North America. All of them (hundreds) are either anchored offshore or in-port. NOTHING is moving.

This has never happened before. It is a horrific economic sign; proof that commerce is literally stopped.”

We checked VesselFinder.com and it appears to show no ships in transit anywhere in the world.  We aren’t experts on shipping, however, so if you have a better site or source to track this apparent phenomenon, please let us know.

We also checked MarineTraffic.com, and it seemed to show the same thing.  Not a ship in transit…

If true, this would be catastrophic for world trade. Even if it’s not true, shipping is still nearly dead in the water according to other indices.  The Baltic Dry Index, an assessment of the price of moving major raw materials by sea, was already at record all-time lows a month ago… and in the last month it has dropped even more, especially in the last week. Today BDIY hit 415…

Factories aren’t buying and retailers aren’t stocking.  The ratio of inventory to sales in the US is an indicator of this. The last time that ratio was this high was during the “great recession” in 2008.

Hey, Ms. Yellen, what recovery? The economy is taking on water at a rapid rate.
The storm has been building for some time, actually. Not so long ago, there was a spate of reports that the world’s automobile manufacturers were in trouble because cars were not selling and shipments were backing up around the world.
ZeroHedge reported on it this way:

“In the past several years, one of the topics covered in detail on these pages has been the surge in such gimmicks designed to disguise lack of demand and end customer sales, used extensively by US automotive manufacturers, better known as “channel stuffing”, of which General Motors is particularly guilty and whose inventory at dealer lots just hit a new record high.”

Here is a photo of unsold cars in the United Kingdom from that article.

The world’s economy seems in serious trouble. You can’t print your way to prosperity. All you are doing is hollowing out your economy. Draining it. And sooner or later it’s empty and you have to start over after a good deal of crisis and chaos.
It’s no coincidence that China is struggling desperately to contain a stock implosion.  Reportedly, banks have been told they are forbidden to buy US dollars and numerous Chinese billionaires have gone missing.  And the markets have just opened on Monday and are again deeply in the red.
Here at The Dollar Vigilante we’ve specialized in explaining the reality of the global faux-economy and why it’s important that you not believe mainstream media lies.
In the meantime, keep your eye on this shipping story!  If it is true and worldwide shipping is disastrously foundering, it’ll only be a matter of days before grocery store shelves will reflect that with increasingly bare shelves.
Are people upset now? Just wait. Interruptions in goods and services, most critically food, almost happened in 2008 during the Great Financial Crisis.  For three days worldwide shipping was stranded due to shipping companies not knowing whether or not the receiver’s bank credit was good.
That crisis was staved off due to a massive amount of money printing.  It was a temporary stay of execution, like bailing out the Titanic with coffee cups, however, and one that may reach much larger proportions in 2016.
Sailors watch the weather to see if it is safe to set sail.  Investors should be watching the economic climate with the same intensity.
We are already sailing through very stormy waters.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/nothing-is-moving-baltic-dry-index-crashes-as-insiders-warn-international-commerce-has-come-to-a-halt/5501779
“Perhaps the most dramatic, and under-reported, new aspect of this ongoing struggle has been the freeze on global shipping. To confirm reports on the internet of a shipping freeze, this writer called NYK lines, a major international shipping firm, and was told “we cannot speak for the whole world but, as far as our company is concerned, with current shipping prices we will lose money every time we send a ship so we have stopped.” Chinese government sources told this newsletter shipping companies are now demanding to be paid in Chinese yuan and not dollars and that is a major reason for the freeze in shipping worldwide. If this continues, it will lead to empty super-market shelves and social unrest, especially in the US. The announcement last week by Walmart that it is closing 269 stores is just the beginning.”
http://geopolitics.co/vital-issues/ben-fulford/the-revolution-continues-with-shipping-freeze-stock-plunge-us-dollar-dumping-20-oil-attacks-on-gold-mines-and-more/

10 thoughts on “International Shipping Shuts Down; Baltic Dry Index Freefalling”

  1. It looks like the de-dollarisation movement is taking it a step further… very curious what happens next. I feel sorry for the Chineese citizens who are buying dollars after the yuan has been devalued a couple of times. All these people are going to take huge losses 🙁

  2. Great! BUT ( yes, there is always a “but”):
    Zoom in a bit on the charts of marine traffic and you see there are LOTS of ships in transit.
    They show the ones close to the coast.
    They do not show the ones at sea beyond that.
    Coastal navigation systems is where they draw their data.

  3. The Baltic Dry Index shows the COST of shipping.
    Right now that cost is low.
    Sure, bulk shipping is down, especially in coal and oil and iron.
    However the price of oil is way down.
    Guess what the single largest input cost of shipping is ( after capital) ?
    Fuel.

  4. The shipping industry is in trouble due to old fashioned “GREED”. Just like GREED on wallstreet, housing, energies and more. I own a small business and due to the constant increases in shipping. I have pretty much lost all of my international buyers. The shipping industry along with all the others continue to chew off their own feet!!!

  5. Here we are a year later.
    Guess what? The BDI is now at 950.
    Remember when you wrote this piece of “the sky is falling!” it was at 350.
    Funny that.

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