Federal Express reported an 18% decline in second quarter earnings today. At first blush, that might appear to indicate that maybe the economy isn’t on the road to recovery after all. That’s because FedEx, and fellow shipping company UPS, are looked at as proxies for the economy. When businesses are building more products, they need to ship in tools that help them do that. And when consumers are opening their wallets, they buy products that are often shipped to them.
But read above the bottom line numbers at FedEx and you see some positive news.
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Tags: Benefits, CEO Fred Smith, Federal Express, GDP, Holiday Sales, Labor Costs, MultiPack, Rick Stine, UPS, Wall Street economists
Posted by Gabriella Stern
on May 13, 2009
Australia,
China,
Commodities,
Energy,
Shipping /
3 Comments
You’ve read about China’s scramble to secure natural resources to feed its growing (yes, still growing) economy. Today comes a landmark deal between U.K. and Chinese companies involving something coal seam gas. Actually, it’s about coal seam gas and liquified natural gas: CSG-to-LNG. The landmark news is this is the first time anyone building a big LNG project fed by CSG has signed up a specific export customer. As DJN’s Ross Kelly reports, “there are three separate corporate entities racing each other to be the first to pull it off, all at the port town of Gladstone in Queensland state,” in Australia. There’s big money involved – no surprise – and also geopolitical energy implications. To wit: crude oil is a scarce resource controlled by OPEC and a few others. Additional energy sources are therefore highly coveted, especially by those whose appetite for energy is increasing by the day. Continue reading…
Tags: Australia, BG Group, China, CNOOC, Coal, Coal Seam Gas, Coking Coal, CSG, David Winning, DJN, Elisabeth Behrmann, Gabriella Stern, Gladstone, Jing Yang, Liquified Natural Gas, LNG, Mining, Ross Kelly, Shipping
