World Demand collapsing

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:58:37 GMT  <== Politics ==> 

Chris Laird at Kitco.com - say goodnight, Dick. [gsc]

There are stories about ships all over the world stacking up in exporting countries, anchored, and not able to sail because they cannot get letters of credit for the shipments. Hong Kong was mentioned as having rows and rows of loaded but idled ships stuck there.

The same goes for oil tankers, lines of them anchored even though they are full, with no buyers. There has been a screeching halt of shipping worldwide. Products are backing up in Asia.

Many of you have heard about the collapse of the Baltic Dry index, a shipping index for containers. It has fallen from over 11,000 in July to around 800, in only a couple of months!

Panicky China

Over 100,000 factories in China are to close by the end of the year. Chinese plant owners are abandoning their plants, unable to pay their bills, and abandoning workers with months of back pay unpaid. That is so serious that riots are breaking out in Chinese cities, and even now there is 10 Pct unemployment in some of the biggest exporting cities in provinces like Guangdong. Unemployment in the cities is one thing that scares China. That's why they came up with that $500 billion stimulus plan. Compared to the size of the Chinese economy, that's like the US coming up with a $2 trillion economic stimulus. Such a sudden and immense move is unheard of in China. It's said that China is actually buying some of their own inventory that is stacking up.

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