As if we needed more evidence that the economy is sinking faster than these leaky buckets can bail us out, The Baltic Dry Index slipped below 1000 points this week.
For those of you who have never heard of the Baltic index, it is the daily average price it costs to ship raw materials like coal, iron, wheat and soybeans. The index shows what people are willing to pay to ship goods on a daily basis.
Lately, they’re not interested in paying very much at all.
And so this week, the Baldry Index fell to 982 points, the lowest it has been since Aug. 8, 2002.
Ship owners are slowing down vessels to cut fuel costs and some are even docking ships because the price they can charge now is so close to the cost of shipping (Israel’s billionaire Ofer family may idle 5 percent of the fleet to cut costs).
"It can’t go much lower than this without owners deciding they don’t want their ships employed," Richard Haines, a senior director at London-based shipbroker Simpson, Spence & Young Ltd. told Bloomberg.
Photo: Dorothea Lange/trialsanderrors
(A chart of the BDI is after the jump)
