SHIPPING INFORMATION IS IN QUESTION

Written by: Donald Hank

Just got back from a 5 hour visit to the Panama Canal visitors center at the Miraflores locks. I went for the express purpose of checking out the rumor that shipping had stopped worldwide.

On the way, I counted 12 ships in the bay waiting their turn to enter canal. When I got to the vistors' center, 4 ships were lined up waiting at the entrance.

This is the Pacific side so most or all were from Asia. (The ones from the Atlantic side start arriving there at 3:30 but employees there tell me there is no slowdown on that side either).

I got there before the center opened but saw an employee walkingto the entrance. I asked her about the rumor of no shipping traffic from a few days ago. She said she had been working there for years and never saw a slowdown in the rate of ships passing thru. I met her co-worker a few min later. Same story. Walking around the grounds, saw a caretaker lady behind an iron fence, who asked if she could help me. I told her about the rumor. Same story. No slowdown or stoppage in memory.

I later spoke with the entrance guard, same story, and finally with a guide. Now these guides have all the pertinent data on the identity and cargoes of the ships passing and announce this as the visitors watch them pass. They know more than anyone.

This guide also said he had never noticed even a slowdown in traffic from either ocean in his years of service.

One employee I asked showed me on his I-phone a site for ship traffic and he zoomed in on the canal. There were 140 odd ships on either side, a total of over 280, just in the canal area alone. I can give you the site and instructions to use it later (kinda tired now).

So you decide whether articles written by people based on charts or second hand info are more bona fide than eye-witness accounts of people who have seen no slowdown in ship traffic for their entire working careers at the canal. I had said in an email to you that I only saw 3 ships in the bay one night and was alarmed. But I now suspect there were many more that I did not see due to the distance and blockage of the view.

I have received 2 emails from UK friends forwarded by friends of theirs with ties to the shipping industry and they both said that shipping traffic has been close to normal and that certainly there was nothing like the reported complete stoppage.

I for one am relieved and will not be stocking up on dried foods quite yet.

Nonetheless, the Baltic Dry Index is too low for comfort and we know from the price to earnings ratios of stocks that a bubble is being blown and that is not good! 2016 would be a good year for it to pop. Experts are saying it will be worse than 2008.