Recessions have taken their toll on Asia exporters. Inquiring minds are reading Japan Exports Drop Record 49% as Global Slump Deepens.
Japan’s exports plunged a record 49.4 percent in February as deepening recessions in the U.S. and Europe sapped demand for the country’s cars and electronics.
Shipments to the U.S., the country’s biggest market, tumbled an unprecedented 58.4 percent from a year earlier, the Finance Ministry said today in Tokyo. Automobile exports slid 70.9 percent.
The collapse signals gross domestic product may shrink this quarter at a similar pace to the annualized 12.1 percent contraction posted in the previous three months, the sharpest since 1974. Prime Minister Taro Aso is compiling his third stimulus package as companies from Toyota Motor Corp. to Panasonic Corp. fire thousands of workers.
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Peacenik has to confess that Peacenik had doubts this morning on the long bus ride to work. Peacenik doubted that things were going to get as bad as Peacenik has been thinking they will get. Peacenik admits that the Baltic Dry Index is up. And truck tonnage increased in February. And new home sales may have bottomed in the U.S. And Larry Kudlow said on TV that we are at the start of a new bull market. There are lots of signs. Peacenik looks for signs. Not just headlines. For example, if things were going to be very very bad, wouldn't Obama, who has access to all the data, all the information, all the secret reports, wouldn't Obama's hair be white by now? It is not. There are other small signs. Sold signs on houses. Big crowds at the Storm hockey games. Packed pubs. Maybe just maybe the bottom is in, or near.
But then Peacenik checked the news this morning. And reality started to ebb back into Peacenik's confused mind. Peacenik read this: EU presidency: US stimulus is 'the road to hell'. And Peacenik read this: IBM To Cut 5,000 Jobs In The US. And now Peacenik is back to staring into the black hole. But not without some doubts, and some hope.
