{"id":8470,"date":"2015-05-26T06:02:01","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T11:02:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8470"},"modified":"2015-05-26T06:02:01","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T11:02:01","slug":"global-trade-dives-most-since-the-financial-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=8470","title":{"rendered":"Global Trade Dives Most since the Financial Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/05\/25\/global-trade-dives-the-most-since-the-financial-crisis\/\" target=\"_blank\">Global Trade Dives Most since the Financial Crisis<\/a><\/h3>\n<p>How great was the global economy in the first quarter?<\/p>\n<p>We know the US economy was crummy. The revised GDP estimate will likely sink into red mire. Hence the heated proposals these days,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.frbsf.org\/economic-research\/publications\/economic-letter\/2015\/may\/weak-first-quarter-gdp-residual-seasonality-adjustment\/\"><u>including at the Fed<\/u><\/a>, to apply \u201ca second round of seasonal adjustment\u201d that would \u201ccorrect\u201d the first-quarter GDP estimate, no matter how bad, into positive territory. An elegant way of covering up an unsightly sore.<\/p>\n<p>So was it just a crummy quarter in the US, or was it a global thing, in which case we might have to apply a \u201csecond round of\u201d whatever to adjust the global downturn out of the picture?<\/p>\n<p>Because here is the thing: in the first quarter, one of the\u00a0crucial measures of the global economy \u2013 global trade \u2013 slumped the most since the Financial Crisis. But\u00a0<em>ironically<\/em>, it wasn\u2019t because of the USA.<\/p>\n<p>The CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, a division of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, just released its latest\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cpb.nl\/sites\/default\/files\/cijfer\/CPB%20World%20Trade%20Monitor%20%28including%20March%202015%29\/cpb-world-trade-monitor-march-2015.pdf\"><u>Merchandise World Trade Monitor,<\/u><\/a>\u00a0which covers global import volumes\u00a0as well as global export volumes. The index dropped 0.1% in March to 136.5, after having already dropped 0.7% in February, and 1.7% in January. The index, which was set at 100 in 2005, is now down 2.5% from the peak of 140.0 in December. That 3.5-point decline was the sharpest since the Financial Crisis.<\/p>\n<p>This chart, going back to January 2012, doesn\u2019t exactly inspire confidence in the current state of the global economy:<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"image-anchor\" href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/World-Trade-Monitor-Volume-2012-2015_03.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-14829\" src=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/World-Trade-Monitor-Volume-2012-2015_03.png\" alt=\"World-Trade-Monitor-Volume-2012-2015_03\" width=\"447\" height=\"501\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>To mitigate the volatility of these kinds of monthly numbers, the CPB offers a measure of trade volume \u201cmomentum,\u201d which it defines as \u201cthe change in the three months average up to the report month relative to the average of the preceding three months.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Global Trade Dives Most since the Financial Crisis How great was the global economy in the first quarter? We know the US economy was crummy. The revised GDP estimate will likely sink into red mire. Hence the heated proposals these days,\u00a0including at the Fed, to apply \u201ca second round of seasonal adjustment\u201d that would \u201ccorrect\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[303,305,312,353,366,3761,805,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-8470","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-fed","tag-federal-reserve","tag-financial-crisis","tag-gdp","tag-global-economy","tag-global-trade","tag-trade","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8470"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8470\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8471,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8470\/revisions\/8471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}