[familyop]

"When will Atlas shrug?"

"Atlas" better describes people who can live on very little than those who consume very much. The "shrug" is already occurring. One effect will be that of most container ships being scrapped.

[george76]

Classical Athens lasted about 170 years. This may be all that we can do as Americans before sinking into the mire of typical governmental tyranny that most of the world has faced since the Sumerians built their first city.

In a thousand years, someone might emerge with the Federalist Papers and the Constitution and wonder about us and examine what went wrong.

[Myrddin]

"Atlas" better describes people who can live on very little than those who consume very much. The "shrug" is already occurring. One effect will be that of most container ships being scrapped.

There have been threads on idle containers and rail cars this week. A fair amount of Asia to Europe cargo passes into west coast U.S. ports, travels by train to the east coast, then is carried on ships to Europe. Even that traffic is down. The cheap shipping on container ships is what makes Asian manufacturing viable by giving them access to the world market. The world isn't buying right now.

[Secret Agent Man]

This is how a billion plus people will die from famine and disease. If the shipping business that ship food and supplies gets chopped down so drastically, there’s no way to ramp up quickly.