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I have been to Myrtle Creek. That is not an area I would use to judge the national economy but I guess the truck traffic could help reflect lumber demand. Nice area ... in the dry season.
In my area, I-5 is not known for local traffic. It's the main commerce artery between Seattle and San Francisco, plus points south. Lumber ships primarily by rail, along with wood by-products like wood resins. Yes, the mills are doing well. Lumber is 25% higher than it was a year ago. 300 lumber rail cars and a dozen tanker loads a week pull out of the local freight yard. That's routine. A local mill has developed wood structural panels suitable for building high rise buildings. They are light weight and flexible, which makes them ideal for earthquake country. Those ship by rail too, because they are too big for a truck.
We don't see what comes off of boats, like cars. They deliver those directly to the ports. What we see on the freeway is mostly manufactured items, like air handlers for high rises, stainless chemical tank trailers, prefab structural steel, and that's just what you see on the flatbeds. The majority of the trucks are enclosed vans hauling stuff that can't get wet. Sometimes I can guess what's in the truck by the name of the company. There's a lot of furniture heading south.
Truck traffic varies a lot, from 10,000 trucks a day during winter (north and southbound together) to 21,000 a day during an active summer. Right now we are pushing record truck traffic. You can stand by the freeway for a while and see that the economy is cooking right along. The first thing companies under stress do is cut back on orders, and that is not happening. Sorry, no recession.
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Truck traffic varies a lot, from 10,000 trucks a day during winter (north and southbound together) to 21,000 a day during an active summer. ........
And that is just one highway. I am always amazed by our transportation system. It takes a lot of trucks and drivers and seems very inefficient.
No I don't believe a recession is on the way. Our economy is in great shape.
Lol...our economy is DEAD and has been on life support since 2001. We are already insolvent, meaning liabilities exceed assets. We have been spending, far beyond our means, for multiple decades while amassing tremendous amounts of public debt, private debt and entitlement liabilities.
The Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises said, “There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.”
U.S. economic growth began slowing down due to its’ acceleration of ‘too much debt’. Instead of allowing natural market forces to clear out the excessive debts, the Federal Reserve chose to go into overdrive to ‘remedy’ the problem. Its’ remedy? Drive interest rates to 0% to reduce the service burden of those debts and print trillions of fresh dollars which, in turn, would fund new borrowing.
Of course, no true ‘solution’ for resolving debt involves piling up even more of it. The only path that history has shown that works involves fiscal austerity and reducing debt. The only real solution is “a voluntary abandonment of the credit expansion”.
You folks are all in denial and have been drinking Fed's Kool Aid for years. There has never been any real economic recovery or growth. The only way we can experience real economic growth again is if we allow deflation and depression to do it's job first. Sorry to burst your bubbles but that is the truth.
Just remember what I said......UNLESS WE GO THRU DEFLATION OR DEPRESSION, UNLESS WE EXPERIENCE MASSIVE PAIN AND DEATH THERE WILL BE NO REAL ECONOMIC GROWTH.
The Fed didn't fix anything, they just made our problems worse and delayed or postponed Deflation and Depression for few years. This was a staling tactic not a fix. Deflation or Depression can't be avoided because its build into our system.
Good luck to you all because you will need it soon. Right now you all worry about you finances, very soon you will be worrying about your own survival and survival of your loved ones. When it happens just remember that you were the ones who cheered for this insanity and criminality!!!
Good luck to you all because you will need it soon.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you've been saying this for years. It's always right around the corner, right?
Quote:
Originally Posted by C2BP
Good luck to you all because you will need it soon. Right now you all worry about you finances, very soon you will be worrying about your own survival and survival of your loved ones. When it happens just remember that you were the ones who cheered for this insanity and criminality!!!
Care to give a time frame to "very soon" so we know when to expect cannibalism in the streets? Anyone can sit here ranting in these forums about how doomsday is coming some day, impress us and give a time frame. Does "very soon" mean three months? One year?
Care to give a time frame to "very soon" so we know when to expect cannibalism in the streets? Anyone can sit here ranting in these forums about how doomsday is coming some day, impress us and give a time frame. Does "very soon" mean three months? One year?
One really does have to wonder...
1. Until recently, there was a presidential administration that was anathema to the doomsdayers. To them, that administration was somewhere between incompetent and grossly malignant. Now the "anti-establishment" candidate has triumphed, but the complaints of the doomsdayers haven't abated.
2. That most dreaded predatory animal of all, the "FED", has been raising rates. It ceased its bond-swap operations. It is indicating the further raising of rates. But Fed-haters remain implacable.
3. 2015 was a net-negative year for stocks. 2016 witnessed two rather unnerving mini-crashes. European stocks are just now recovering to their highs of 2015 (well, I've been too cowardly to check today's news... maybe a new "crash" is afoot?), and many are flat (or negative in dollar-terms) for the entire 21st century. And supposedly we have a runaway bull market?
4. Unemployment is down to historic lows. Remember, those numbers were phony - until they weren't (see #1 above). What should we have - negative unemployment? OK, maybe the numbers are still wrong... but then, how can we claim that the reporting-agencies are politicized?
5. We've been running dangerously low on oil since the 1970s, except that now, 40 years onwards, we have a persistent glut. Gold zigged and zagged, and now in inflation-adjusted terms, it's cheaper than it's been in over a generation.
Nevertheless, there IS a simmering crisis. What is it? The crisis is that the 1870-1970 pace of innovation is evidently slowing down. We're not as innovative as our grandparents were. And that bodes ill for the only number that ultimately matters: productivity-growth.
Better advice: Don't pay attention to the sideshow barkers.
I pay attention to everything.
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