As a note about how quickly things change… the BDI (Baltic Dry Index) has gone from a little over $11,000 in May 2008 to right around $3,200 today. I’m not sure what units that is measured in (dollars per ton per 1000 miles?), but if you’re shipping tons of raw materials by ship, you just saw your shipping costs get cut by over 2/3 in about 5 months.

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This isn’t some stock market where we have “evil short sellers” or forced selling through margin calls… and it’s not a bond market where people are refusing to lend each other money… this is the material cost to ship something around the world, and it’s crashing hard.