Reasons To be Cheerful # 0001

Per Felix Salmon

The Baltic Dry Index, which measures international shipping costs, was fixed today at 2,503, down 9% on the day and down 79% from its May high of 11,793. It's a volatile index, and these levels are hardly unprecedented: the index was below 3,000 for a good year from mid-May 2005 onwards.

He wrote that on Thursday, and the index fell by another 200+ points on Friday.

This, like the falling oil price, is much-needed good news for the world economy. The level of shipping costs, some people were saying, had become a more important obstacle to world trade than tariff levels.