Free Shipping - UPDATED

Would you like to be paid to rent a container ship?  Does $2000/day towards your fuel bill sound good?  GMI is paying Glencore to rent their ship because it has to be kept seaworthy and operating or risk being scrappage within a few months.

This is not good news.  The per ton cost of renting a ship may be the best single indicator of world trade health. The go-to place for that information is the Baltic Dry Index which summarizes $US cost to bulk ship a ton of dry goods for the entire freighter industry.  It crashed in 2008 but "free" is new territory!


Will we be warm, beneath the storm in Canada? 
UPDATE: Shipping firms defaulting on their debt. March 2012

Recent figures

Longer term from 1985 to 2009