What has amazed me so far is no large shipping company has entered into bankruptcy for they all must be seriously hurting, especially the ones who have built the megaships to ply the Pacific from China to America. The widening of the Panama Canal might just end up being a huge waste of money because Asian trade is already in terminal decline and thus the economics of Eastern seaboard and Gulf States needing a direct link is already rapidly becoming unnecessary. The ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles with the help of railroads are most able set up to continue to act as the Asian gateway.

Amongst the specialist vessels to be hit hard by the recession are the car carriers. Many relatively new ships are being permanently laid up awaiting orders from the owners to which scrap yard they will be heading. As demand slackens for bulk ships, many of the newer vessels await the same fate as their older sisters. In the meantime Singapore and the Philippines can look forward to some very profitable years ahead in being the biggest grave yard for ships the world has ever seen.

Earlier this month China declared a catastrophe; year over year November exports plummeted a massive 2.2%. Japan, the world’s number two economy, on the other hand announced their exports plunged 26.7%. Here we have the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the gateway for Asian imports are literally ghost towns for the past four months. The shipping industry is in total turmoil with nose-diving freight rates and fleets of container ships laid up. Meanwhile China is trying to tell us they are all but unaffected by the global meltdown in trade. This is in spite of leaks coming out of China that business activities such as the toy industry is now 50% of what it was at peak, with tens of thousands of factories shuttered and tens of millions of migrant (Chinese slave labor) Chinese from the agricultural hinterland returning home to their family rice paddy plots.

In a nutshell, the Chinese from their President Hu Jintao down to the lowest level Communist officials are totally arrogant, corrupt liars and cheats. In reality, Wall Street is not too far behind China since they actually share a great deal in common. Whereas a Chinese official might make up to tens of $millions practicing their craft, those Wall Street “gurus” led by fallen kings such as Bernie Madoff, Richard Fuld (Lehmann Bros) and Alan Schwartz (Bear Sterns) ran off with $billions in their pockets. At least in America, whether it was too late or not, Wall Street and greedy corporation CEO’s have been exposed for what they truly were/are. By contrast, in China until they return to being the agrarian economy they once were; which is what I predict happening with the wealth of the country based by barter, as was the case for centuries, China will continue to be run by filthy lowlife Communist Party officials.

In the geo-political arena, America’s ineffectual administration under George “Dubya” has lost all respect on the world stage. Much of it was brought about by sheer stupidity of an inept leader. Thanks also goes to China and Russia who have undermined this great country. Our global influence has never been so low in more than one hundred years. China, with its neighbor, Russia are our true enemies in every way. Why? The leadership of both countries are not only liars of the first order, but they also run corrupt governments. While Cheney/Bush did very well at covering up the collapse of our financial system, until it had to spend $trillions salvaging it a couple of months back, at least in a Judeo/Christian society there are checks and balances, that in the end, protect us as the greater good for mankind is the over-riding factor. What many of us do not realize is that Communism’s “official religion” is atheism. At the end of the day we have a higher order to answer to; China and Russia don’t. That is why Chinese have no conscience tainting their food exports with poison, making dangerous toys with leaded paint, tires that fall apart, supplying toxic pharmaceutical ingredients, producing a high failure rate in computer components, poor assembly of scooters and cars etc, etc. Add this China’s flagrant abuse of copyright or intellectual property and we have our enemy number one.

I say to Obama give China the flick and make it quick. We don’t need their ilk feeding off us. They are the antipathy in every way of what America stands for.