As Bloomberg notes, China is leading the global slump in demand growth for the shipping industry’s biggest source of cargoes…
A surge in China’s imports of iron ore will slow to just 1 percent in 2016, about half this year’s expansion and the weakest pace in six years, according to data from Clarkson Plc, the world’s biggest shipbroker. Global trade in the raw material will increase the most slowly since 2001. China’s economy will grow by 6.5 percent in 2016, the least in a generation.
“The main issue is the lack of demand for iron ore from China,” Eirik Haavaldsen, an analyst at Pareto Securities AS in Oslo, said by phone. “This market is looking like a disaster and the rates are a reflection of that. It is looking scary for the market and it doesn’t look like there is going to be any life in the market in the near term.”
As if facts mattered. Simply ‘print’ more money and hand it out to create demand for preferred segments of the economy thereby manufacturing a ‘new reality.’
How long can the fraud be sustained? That will be interesting to watch.