A less-rocky road: If the global economy is indeed on the road to durable recovery, April 22 may go down as the day it became more than just hope and hype. On that day, UPS and Caterpillar, two of the most important proxies for transportation activity, not only posted impressive quarterly results, but offered very bullish guidance for their companies and, by extension, shipping behavior. UPS, which has remained steadfastly cautious on the U.S. market, said it is seeing clear evidence of corporate America opening the domestic purse strings, placing orders and, of course, getting them moved. Caterpillar, which in many ways is the bellwether of the global industrial and manufacturing sector, chimed in with comments from its CEO that "it appears the world's economy will have one of the strongest, broadest recoveries in years." In the post-Enron era, no publicly held company is going to broadcast good news unless it has the visibility to support its optimism. The comments from such two high-profile companies signal very good times ahead.
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