There is growing concern that technology and owners and labor supply are not well coordinated. Owners are loath to provide technology they do not know will work reliably. It is growing increasingly hard to recruit skilled labor for the industry. A recent survey showed that one of the big complaints among seafaring staff was the increased regulatory burden of reporting and inspection which occurs at every port visit.

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There has been a lot of talk about a canal across Nicaragua. Is this talk or is the project viable.
Any project of the sort envisioned by Chinese backers must hThere has been a lot of talk about a canal across Nicaragua. Is this talk or is the project viable.
Any project of the sort envisioned by Chinese backers must have the four P’s: politics, public funds, and persistence and it must also have some sort of economic need to make it pay in addition to any public need it fulfills. Any one of these four is not easy. When combined with the quanta of funds and person-hours with a shaky need, the outlook is not very good.

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We hear a lot about port congestion especially on the West Coast. In shipping there is always another way and it seems that the NVOCC’s are coming out of the woodwork offering East Coast and Gulf Coast alternatives to the West Coast routes. They are prospering. I am not sure the regulars are in the container trades. So how does this work?
NVOCC’s act likes carriers and book cargoes but they do not operate vessels but charter slots or ships on the spot market or for the customer. They are more than forwarders. But the point here is that they can be very nimble.

Until about wo decades ago shipping was the world’s most extensive mom-and-pop operation. Most companies were family-owned and most operated under the parochial protection of states where the vessels were flagged and where the owners lived or had some relationship other than registry.  Debt financing was the way ships were bought and working capital came from lines secured by equity. This has all changed. Shipping has become financialized. What does this mean?