Baltic Dry. A 2013 prediction?
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I remember an article by Dave Perrin where he highlights the Baltic Dry Index as a gauge of the recession. http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2008/no-1249-september-2008/all-sea
Just read that on the 12th Dec it had 8.2% plunge, crashing from 900 to 826, or the biggest drop since 2008. http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/414282/20121212/baltic-dry-shipping-global-trade-exports-recession.htm
Also commercial ship- building orders were down 48% in the first nine months of 2012 and order backlog fell to half of the level in first half of 2008 and all lead sector indicators such as freight rates, ship prices, used ship transactions, and used ship prices suggest that commercial shipbuilding demand is unlikely to recover much in 2013. Ship prices have fallen 35-40% from the peak and the Clarkson newbuilding price index (down 8% this year) is now back to levels seen in early 2004. http://gcaptain.com/global-shipbuilding-outlook-global/
In essence, the price of transporting goods collapsed due to lack of demand and over-capacity.
2013 a deeper recession?
More about the Baltic Dry Index here… http://www.thedailysheeple.com/global-economic-slowdown-signals-sad-new-year_122012 How bad could this actually get? Reminds me of a front page from the Standard from a couple of years ago which stated "You ain't seen nothing yet".
Ozymandias wrote:More about the Baltic Dry Index here… http://www.thedailysheeple.com/global-economic-slowdown-signals-sad-new-year_122012 How bad could this actually get? Reminds me of a front page from the Standard from a couple of years ago which stated "You ain't seen nothing yet".Not a bad article for information, but its conclusion that capitalism is heading for an economic collapse is not going to happen whilst a majority still support the system of wage slavery. In short, capitalism will only collapse once that support is withdrawn.
Brian, since the said website appears to be very much a "survivalist" one, it can hardly say everything is going to be alright !! Grab your assault rifle under your 2nd Amendment right and head to your cabin in the hills with its cellar stocked full of canned goods while the world and the economy goes to hell is its message.Perhaps though they may have a point. Didn't Luxemburg say the choice is either socialism or barbarism?Capitalism as a functioning world system may well collapse for a variety of reasons other than the working class abolishing it…environmental destruction, uncontrollable war, spread of disease…It is an irrational system as we see when we have oil, coal and gas industry in their own business interest but also against their individual interest as human beings act to under-play the global warming threat of their emissions in much the same denialist fashion as the tobacco companies criminally corrupted cancer research findings and their own culpability in the deaths of their own family and friends in the craving for corporate profits. Its a crazy world full of crazies.
Ozymandias wrote:Reminds me of a front page from the Standard from a couple of years ago which stated "You ain't seen nothing yet".As this is not something we would normally say in the context of a capitalist economic crisis, I checked and the phrase does occur in an article the Scottish comrade's blog Socialist Courier republished in 2010 from the Socialist Standard of 1981. The article, about language, ends:
Quote:Becoming multilingual in this way would be the best way of becoming a true citizen of the world socialist community. Socialist society will mean the liberation of all mankind, without distinction of race, sex or language. We ain't seen nothing yet.So in a quite different context.As to the Daily Sheeple people, yes, they do seem to be "survivalists" who are preparing to take to the hills with their guns and boxes of tinned food when the collapse of the economic system they anticipate occurs. Another doomsday scenario just as credible as that of those who said that the world ended last Friday.
Off topic, a bit more on the survivalists, or preppers are they are increasing called…preparing for the inevitable collapse.There has been a misleading history about the Second Amendment with cherry-picked quotes to suggest that the men who wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights wanted an armed population to do battle with the U.S. government. The actual history indicates nearly the opposite, that the Framers were deeply concerned about the violent disorder that surfaced in Shays’ Rebellion when poor veterans and farmers rose up in western Massachusetts. The revolt was subdued by an ad hoc army assembled by wealthy Bostonians in early 1787, just weeks before the Constitutional Convention convened in Philadelphia.George Washington, who followed Shays’ Rebellion closely, was alarmed by the spreading unrest. Any review of Washington’s writings in the years after the Revolution show him fretting about civil and economic chaos. It is within the context of these concerns that the writing of the U.S. Constitution must be understood. The Second Amendment could be viewed as mostly a concession to the states, ensuring the right of a “free State” to arm its citizens for the purpose of maintaining “security” through “a well-regulated Militia.” The key Framers were mostly well-to-do white men, many possessing African slaves and/or land on the frontier inhabited by Native Americans. These American aristocrats opposed radical challenges to the post-Revolution social order. The concept of the Second Amendment’s “well-regulated Militia” was primarily intended to maintain “security” in the states, not undermine it. There were fears of more uprisings by poor whites or, even more frightening to many Framers, slave revolts or frontier attacks by Native Americans.Thus, with the Second Amendment in place in 1791, President George Washington and the Second Congress turned to strengthening the state militias through the Militia Acts of 1792. Their urgency related to a new anti-tax revolt in western Pennsylvania, known as the Whiskey Rebellion. Once the militias were strong enough – and with negotiations with the rebels failing – President Washington personally led a combined force of state militias to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. The rebels were scattered and order was finally restored. In other words, today’s reinvention of the Second Amendment as some ultra-radical idea of the Framers to empower the population to violently challenge the established order and overthrow the government amounts to revisionist history, not the actual intent of the Framers.On the Right, the idea of armed insurrection is mostly embraced by alienated whites angry about federal action in defense of minorities that address the legacy of white supremacy. They envisage fighting government bureaucrats intent on trampling the “liberties” of “real Americans.”On the Left, some are equally lost in fantastic conspiracy theories, obssessed by dreams of some glorious revolution in the future and wait for the inevitable collapse of The System, followed by a popular insurrection that somehow brings Utopia to the world.Extracted from herehttp://truth-out.org/opinion/item/13579-the-price-of-revolutionary-illusions
Since we've veered off topic and until called to order, here's something that the Socialist Labor Party of America said on the "right to bear arms" (see page
:http://www.slp.org/pdf/thepeople/mar02tpP.pdfIt seems sensible, i.e. that the right to bear arms against the threat of an oppressive regime has been replaced by the right to vote and the right to organise industrially, which could be far more effective weapons under present circumstancxes.On the other hand, Leninists and others who still believe that capitalism can only be overthrown by armed insurrection ought to be committed to defending/demanding the right to bear arms (and organising weapon training for their members) but only those who publish the Weekly Worker seem to take this seriously, incorporating it into their programme:http://www.cpgb.org.uk/home/weekly-worker/654/workers-militia-and-burning-necessityWhich is one good reason for us, and the rest of the working class, not to take them seriously.When i have heard similar statements from the barracadist/insurrectionist factions i usually ask if they know how to fire a rifle much less know how to drive a tank.(Some fall into the trap of going against their over-emphasis of uneven development of consciousness justifying a leadership case by saying there will be desertions and disaffection within military ranks which is our own conclusion that with command of the state we would control an army who would also be influenced by socialist ideas. I have met some ex-squaddies who became leftists after leaving but none ever imagined a rvolutionary civil war)In all my long time associating with the left i know of just one, a then WRP member, who seriously followed up his belief that the revolution would be an armed one and had joined the local Paras TA unit to learn how to handle weapons.I have to admit he was always welcome on the picket line. When one scab, a known member of various right wing fascist groups crossed a picket line by brandishing a knife, he got his just desserts from a good kicking when he got caught unawares delivering mail in a dark tenement after the strike…no witnesses but we all knew who did it…As another asise off topic , I also remember an ex RSM tell me that if the Russians had invaded all it would mean for the likes of him and i would be that our postman caps would have a red star instead of the crown on it.
alanjjohnstone wrote:I also remember an ex RSM tell me that if the Russians had invaded all it would mean for the likes of him and i would be that our postman caps would have a red star instead of the crown on it.Yes, that's what socialists used to say about all that Irish "independence" would mean would be painting the pillar boxes green, though I think it also meant that retired Irish postmen had their pensions cut.
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