Rail Shipments Indicate U.S. Heading For Deeper Depression

by JASmius



About that Obamaconomy The One keeps delusionally bragging about:  outside his bubble....



....it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse:

The dark clouds just continue to gather on the nation’s economic horizon.

This time, rail traffic has plunged to recessionary levels, according to Wolf Street.com’s Wolf Richter.

U.S. railroad cargo in 2015 dropped the most in six years, and 2016 isn’t expected to be any better.

"Transportation is a measure of how well the real economy is clicking," Richter wrote. [emphasis added]

You know, the economy in which we all languish in impoverished misery while the Democrat Party elite live it up in their palaces and ivory towers.

"The deterioration in the second half of 2015 dragged the whole year down from 2014: carloads fell 6.1%, according to the Association of American Railroads (AAR), while intermodal containers and trailers edged up 1.6%, for a total decline of 2.5%. But the deterioration late in the year was a doozie," he explained.

"In December, total volume dropped 8.9% year over year, with both components down: even intermodal containers and trailers, which had been holding up for much of the year, edged down 0.7%; and carloads (bulk commodities, autos, and the like) plunged 15.6%.

Only four of the twenty carload categories showed gains," he said.

"But the big ones got crushed: carloads of coal, the largest category – done in by the low price of U.S. natural gas emanating from the collapsing natural gas industry....

And the Obama Regime's rabidly anti-energy policies.

....plunged 27.9%; metallic ores, the second-largest category, plunged 39.1%; and petroleum and petroleum products, the third largest category, plunged 20.5%. The commodities rout is tearing into railroads with a vengeance!"

To provide some historical context from the first Great Depression, we are in approximately the equivalent of early 1937, with a leftwing extremist despot barricaded in the White House, the economic misery showing no end in sight by deliberate public policy, and global war clouds gathering on every horizon.  And, just as back then, another downturn within the downturn is on its way.

And what choices are the media dictating to us for president?  A man who favors single-payer socialized medicine, double-digit wealth confiscation taxes, and a nuclear trade war with Red China representing the Republicans, and a woman who insists she'll go ever farther than her Marxist-Alinskyist, "fundamentally transformative" Donk predecessor.

I'll tell you what, folks: I've been skeptical for the past three years that there will even be a 2016 election, and I still am.  But if this is the one we end up with, I'll guarantee you it will be the last.