International maritime trade is already facing what appears to be its most important crisis since the 1930s, when a wave of protectionism served as both a response and a consequence of the crash...
International maritime trade is already facing what appears to be its most important crisis since the 1930s.
thirties, when a wave of protectionism served as a response and consequence to the stock market crash
New Yorker. Today, in the incredible globalization, with the fall in demand and the certainty that the values
monetary values given to transactions vanish at the rate of stock market crashes, the
large global supermarket into a place where mistrust is dispensed with pleasure. Precisely, badly
the great well-oiled machine of world trade, which is maritime transport, is developing there, pending
of the fluidity in the contracts, the faith in the veracity of the bills of lading and, above all, that
the recipient of the goods and raw materials finds consumers with purchasing power, with
liquidity that has not been liquidated.
The growth rate of maritime transport had increased exponentially, especially in the
Asian-northwestern axis, although also in other latitudes. In fair correspondence with this rhythm,
a race of lengths began, towards the gigantism of the ships, and the "hubs" and other
mega-structures for the exchange and transfer of raw materials from the South and products manufactured at low cost
in the arc of the Far East, towards the trans-European networks and the Yankee colossus.
One more of the bubbles that have formed in these years of financial fundamentalism has been that of the
maritime companies, from fleets of increasing size that need to be amortized, and which are the great
ambassadors of the internationalization of the economy. The greedy nature is also bubble-like
creation of maritime "transshipment nodes" along the maritime routes, with the aim of monopolizing
transits and some type of economy of scale that would stop by boosting dependent local development.
However, the forecasts are failing, and most port and shipping company leaders
recognize clear expectations of decrease in berths, while many esplanades and dikes of
the industrial geography become improvised warehouses of cars that cannot be sold, or other
merchandise that does not find a payer. Many, knowing that they are risking their money, cancel
hastily expansion plans. Others, probably because they do not value fairly the fact of not playing
with your own money, or with those.
Some wonder if, after this macroeconomic fading, which, however, is approaching, for
many reasons, to what is already emerging as the third great depression, the recovery of world traffic
will require the infrastructure that is planned today. But perhaps it is sensible - because, where did it go?
prudence? - think of absolute limits to globalization, once we know that the engine of its
expansion? oil? - has little prospect of continuing to grow in production volumes, as it does not
discover, not even close, the reserves to replace those that, due to pure aging, are running out.
It is no longer just that crude oil is the fuel for all maritime transport, but it is also the pillar
essential to the dynamics of credit growth that it requires. Times, of course, very different.
The Polynesians, anthropologists describe, built artisanal landing strips and control towers,
with the vain hope that the goods that they once saw would miraculously fall at their feet
brought the first Western colonizers. Today, we are preparing to continue with the inertia that has marked
the previous decades, despite the fact that History is already turning from its ceiling of multiplication, and it insists on
build and expand ports because, like the Polynesians, we suffer from the so-called cargo cult syndrome.
With the splinters of the past we struggle to make our way into a future of very different size.
We dismember the coast, at the cost of more infrastructure (which must be maintained) and waste of our
squalid access to money, to house dikes without ships: from "hub" to "bluff", as has already happened in the
Gran Canaria Arinaga or as would happen in the Tenerife Granadilla, if not for the recognition and perhaps the
humility that new challenges are not solved with redundant recipes.
Nothing new, of course, that
insist, with someone else's gunpowder, and want to inflict on the next generations the disconcerting folly
of which, despite having blurred vision, alleges that the path was always the one he was taking, even though the
signs give satiated indication to the contrary. Bitter inheritance of debts open more gaps to our
battered land.
