Recession on water
For a view of what the recession looks like, the Daily Mail takes a look at shipping coming from Asia. Specifically, off the coast of Malaysia, where about 500 ships are moored, with nowhere to go, and apparently, with no cargo.
It's all doom and gloom in the shipping industry apparently, with Maersk reporting it's first half-year loss in its 105-year-history, last year, and expectations that it will remain over capacity for the next couple of years.
I've updated the article's satellite photo of Singapore's harbour,
The latest China PMI shows December to be up from November, to 56.1 -- indicating that manufacturing is again taking off in China. Capacity isn't going towards the domestic consumer goods market however, as a lot of China's stimulus went to infrastructure spending. Will there be trickle down domestic consumer spending? Is some of that manufacturing capacity going to send goods to North America and Europe? Do we have any money to spend? Retail sales has been down all of 2009, and most expect there to be a soft recovery in 2010, even with the little surge we saw at Christmas.
2010 will be an interesting year -- for the container ships moored off Singapore as well.
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