Sunday, April 11, 2010

Still a puzzle on transportation and housing

Once again back to oil imports by volume

My problem is the continued use of imported oil even after the household began to deflate. Go back to this paper. The authors study the decline of almost 1.2 million households from 2005 to 2008 as the consumer deflated and crowded in with parents or room mates. If the consumer is recoiling from the cost of a house purchase, then why isn't the consumer also recoiling from continued oil use? Notice that from 2005 to the crash in July 2008 that the consumer is still holding oil imports quite high, either directly or indirectly.

The behavior of the consumer in contracting from house purchases in 2005 puts a serious dent in the housing bubble theory of the crash, but the continued commercial use of oil puts the final nail in the coffin.

The high import level did not come from the military, which uses less than 2%. What was using this oil in the face of a consumer contraction? Transportation, consuming about 60% of oil use.

The paradox to be explained, if the household is contracting, then why is it just contracting from housing. Even after the housing crash in 2006, oil use still remains high, even as oil passed $100/barrel.

My theory still holds, the Internet was putting extreme stress on transportation.

As the human search engine I find this Forrester report from 2006:

The study points to 2007 shopping growth as the meter. In 2007 shoppers spent $175 billion online; however in 2006 consumers spent $144 billion. Though shopping did increase (21%) in year over year, this is the first growth decline online shopping has seen; from 2005 to 2006, shopping increased at a rate of 24%.

Based on that information, Forrester forecasts that shopping will grow to $204 billion in 2008, a 17% increase. By 2009 online shopping will reach $235 billion (15% increase), by 2010 it will reach $267 billion (14% increase) and by 2012 online shopping is expected to reach $334 billion (11% increase).




Web growth

Notice the accelerated growth of web sites arround Dec 2005

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