Economic Shenanigans / Market Crisis

[Montmorency]

Container lines report record profitability in the third quarter

Αll global ocean carriers saw revenues increase substantially as a consequence of the record-high freight rates, with year-on-year revenue growth ranging from 83.9% for Maersk to 274.1% for Wan Hai, αccording to data from Sea-intelligence.

In terms of earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT), the shipping lines made a whopping US$37.24 billion in operating profit in Q3 of 2021 alone, according to the Danish firm.

"Combine this with the 2021 first half operating profit of 42.10 billion, and the carriers have made nearly US$80 billion in operating profit so far this year[c. November 2021]," noted Alan Murphy, CEO of Sea-Intelligence.

This does not include MSC, the world's currently second-largest carrier, which as a privately held company is not required to publish its accounts.

"To put this into perspective, the combined 2010-2020 operating profit across all quarters was US$37.86 billion," added Murphy.

Darn shame about that inflation.

[Montmorency]

I know the consensus has been for a while that 2023 sees a global recession, but I don't have the background to analyze the meaning of this in particular.



Like, what was wrong with 1865?

[Furunculus]

the end of a 'war economy'?

[drone]

Crash of the Cotton Bonds, I assume. That would have rippled through European economies.

[Montmorency]

Was the US the primary issuer of government bonds in the world at the time? From a quick search the CSA for its part issued bonds only in the hundreds of millions of their dollars.

[spmetla]

Any thoughts on the current banking problems? Seems a smaller problem than 2008 and just centered around banks doing riskier lending instead of the real estate crisis like in the former.

Should the Fed keep interest rates as ease to making lending more predictable at the price of inflation?

[Montmorency]

Unfortunately, I don't know much about international finance, so it would be better to present learned perspectives on the issue for discussion.

Inflation might be higher long-term due to all sorts of structual issues, including the decline of neoliberal trade and labor relations worldwide, aging workforces, and the painstaking transition away from petrochemicals. But for now - in the US at least - inflation is simply not a problem. According to the BLS, since last July the cumulative CPI-U increase has been 2.3%. In other words, it is very likely to be between 3-4% on an annualized basis by mid-2023. I would prefer our long-term inflation target to be 4% instead of 2% anyway.

The Fed is about to announce another rate hike apparently. I don't know enough to judge this policy in its extent and timing, but rising rates in most countries are clearly stressing bank equities. Momentum for the nationalization of retail banking now that the finsec middleman is basically obsolete doesn't seem to be growing in response unfortunately.

[Montmorency]

It's still hard to believe we (the US at least) managed to avert the pandemic recession. Thank goodness for Big Daddy Government and the nanny state.