Last week, I ran across an article about what’s happened to the hundreds of cargo ships that used to ply the world’s oceans filled with the products of international trade. Rather than writing about it, this is a situation where pictures tell the story in rather chilling detail.
The photo above, for example shows hundreds of cargo ships all of them empty sitting off the cost of Singapore.
And there’s more:
This photo shows the lights from the empty ships off the coast of one of Malaysia’s islands, but it’s the maps that really bring this home.
From the Singapore Strait (red dots mean an inactive ship):
To the Bosporus:
To the Chinese coast:
The conclusion is inescapable:
“The bottom line: world trade has collapsed, shipping lines, once flourishing, have become graveyard archipelagos populated by rusting ship skeletons. Yet all of this is beyond the land, and thus far from sight. Of course, who needs trade when you have a speculative market trading in its own bubble, hitting yearly highs day after day, thanks only and exclusively to the Chairman’s printing press. It is a pity these ships can not sail in the sea of hundred dollar bills that is being created each and every day at the Federal Reserve, whose only use these days it seems is to buy junker stocks and to feed the algos that lift whatever offers are stupid enough to float in the equity market.”
H/T: Ed Driscoll and Doug Ross
This is a great post, it illustrates how much we can learn by observing the world around us. We don’t necessarily need reams of government data or copious platitudes from anointed expert-for-a-day, spinmeisters. As far as the economy goes I pay attention to some obvious things like traffic density, for sale signs, rental signs, help wanted signs, restaraunt crowds and new holes in the ground. Less obviously I look at yard sales (countercyclical), use of local parks on long holiday weekends (countercyclical), and customers in waiting at barbers and hairstylists.
its the same situation with planes…hundreds are grounded in the american desserts where the air is dry and keep them in good condition while awaiting better times