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LadyEllen -> European trade news (10/15/2008 9:25:09 AM)
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Sorry to say it looks like we're in a lot of trouble if these rescue packages for the banks dont start producing some results soon.
In transport, we see it first when there's decline in trade - and there's a big decline in trade. There are empty vehicles all over the continent as I type, and there have been this last two weeks - there is not enough to be moved internationally for them to be occupied, which means that there has been a huge reduction in what is being bought and sold - since no one can keep their trucks standing and theyre usually all totally occupied. Transport rates are being hammered in the meantime on what little there is to be moved.
Strangely the only country not suffering as much is the UK with regard to export trailers - the demand from the UK is the same as it ever was. But then, the import routes were always double the volumes of the export routes - the import routes have declined dramatically. Time was, (two weeks back), it was a problem to load from the UK to the continent, but once there, a good paying reload was waiting - now there's nothing on the other side waiting. And worst of all, the market has dried up on every other route - so its a pan-European problem we have.
Whatever rationalisations are coming (and if this keeps up there will be plenty) on the supply side, will purely be about the decline in international trade within Europe - and the job losses in what is a service industry for us (remember, service industries, our saviour following the end of manufacturing?) will be difficult to recover. This isnt about us being inefficient - its about a bunch of financiers screwing the whole lot of us over.
And every job lost in the transport/logistics sector now, will reflect another few in the manufacturing sector somewhere, whether here in the UK or elsewhere in Europe or the world. Every ten transport/logistics jobs or so, means another lay off in the sectors that supply us.
I trust however that taxpayer money will be made available for all to have comfortable lives in this instance? After all, if the guilty got theirs it would be odd if the innocent got nothing?
E
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