Carriers negotiate yearly service contracts with their customers, the shippers. This year shippers won the upperhand, winning substantial discounts from carriers. Now carriers are in a panic that they cannot break even given the contracts they have signed. This doesn't sound very wise on their part, because they should know their costs pretty well, but it is very interesting that in only a couple of months, they want out of their own contracts. Call it the Obama effect.
What the article doesn't say is that this coordinated action may in fact be illegal. For many years carriers could act as a cartel and share pricing information, but the market has been deregulated, at least to the EU, and this is illegal. Perhaps it is only the pacific routes that are being affected because of this.
It all still boils down to those of us without jobs aren’t buying stuff. Shipping out our manufacturing sector was a big mistake. If your economy is 70 percent consumer spending, those consumers need to have discretionary income.