On July 11, the very day of Halleck's appointment, he boasted to his wife, "I have commenced receiving letters from the North urging me to march on Washington & assume the Govt!!" Fearful of removing him outright, Halleck and Lincoln chose the half-measure of shipping McClellan's Army north without him.
The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of shipping rates for bulk goods, has foundered.
THE Baltic Dry index, a measure of shipping rates, is a notoriously volatile figure, driven by a whole bunch of factors including economic activity and shipping capacity.
The third and fourth measures are commodity prices and the Baltic Dry index, a measure of shipping rates (see chart, which is on a log scale).
FOR most of the past two decades the main measure of shipping costs has been used as a guide to what is happening to world trade.
The Baltic Dry Index, a measure of shipping rates and an indicator of global trade activity, started to turn down late last year.There are two possible explanations for these signs of slowdown.
Chinese prices of steel have risen by 20% since November, and the Baltic Dry Index, a measure of shipping rates and hence the demand for commodities, has more than doubled, although it is still 84% below its 2008 peak.
The Bureau of Labour Statistics also revised the figure for August from a loss of 4,000 jobs to a gain of 89,000.Costly cargoThe Baltic Exchange Dry Index, a measure of shipping costs for commodities such as grains, coal and iron ore, passed the 10,000 mark for the first time.
According to Lloyd's Marine Intelligence Unit, nearly 10% of the world's merchant ships are swaying gently at anchor because of a collapse in global trade.Since the recession bit hard last autumn a lot of attention has been paid to the plunge in the Baltic Dry Index, a composite measure of the cost of shipping bulk cargoes such as iron ore and coal.
This is designed using statistical methods to measure the strength of preferences of shipping companies towards different bunkering-related characteristics of a port.
