What If The Imploding Baltic Dry Index Does Reflect Global Trade After All
Earlier today, the Baltic Dry Index hit a new all time low.
This is not new: we have been tracking the collapse of the Baltic Dry – aside for the occasional dead cat bounce – to all time lows, a proxy of global shipping and thus trade, for the past 7 years.
To be sure, for staunch goalseeking Keynesian the collapse in Baltic Dry rates had little to do with actual demand for this services, and everything to do with the alleged supply of drybulk shipping, which was the stated reason for the collapse in costs.
In other words, “trade was fine.”
Well, maybe not as the following chart from Capital Economics shows:
Correlation may not be causation, but it sure is troubling. Which begs the question: as the baltic dry index continues to plumb new record lows, how long until central banks realize that for all their omnipotence and all their attempts to restore growth, inflation and the “wealth effect” they never mastered the only thing worth printing in a globalized world: printing trade?
