It's the shipping rates on the 24 busiest routes. On January 10, it dropped 4.6%, and it's dropped 28% from its November 13 peak. It's basically an index of shipping rates of bulk items, which in turn is a pretty good indicator of where the world economy is going.
It's going down, and it also indicates that the world economy has not "decoupled" from the US economy.
Then we have Citibank announcing a $24 billion write-down, (doubtless with more to come) , and announcing around 20,000 job cuts. What's more, the it appears that the government of China has suggested that it will prevent a multi billion dollar investment in Citi by the state-owned China Development Bank.
This indicates that China is getting twitchy about making US investments, which does not bode well for the dollar, which is currently at $1.4877:€1.0000, within about a penny of its all time low.
And then there is the fact that banks are unable to sell Chrysler financing, amounting to about $7 billion. It had originally been $10 billion, but they could not "syndicate" (sell) that debt toward the end of last year.
Wolfgang Münchau has an interesting analysis of the Credit Default Swap (CDS) markets, which go much farther and deeper than subprime, and appear to be in at least as much trouble. (A primer on CDS, which are the most prevalent form of derivative, here).
Münchau makes a point, and I'm not even sure he notices, when he says, "A truly awful scenario would be a long recession. The US did experience some longish recessions in the past, for example from November 1973 until March 1975, but there was no CDS market around at the time."
That's the point. This brave new world of complex financial instruments has created a tsunami which is now looming over modern financial markets.
We also have Robert Shiller, co-creater of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price index saying that falling house prices have gutted the value of Countrywide Financial, which Bank of America just purchased.
When he says, "I might have a lower valuation of Countrywide than Bank of America does," he means, "Those idiots just threw money after bad."
I said the same thing 3 days ago, but obviously, I'm an engineer, I'm not an economist, dammit*!
*I love it when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!.
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