In the wee hours of March 26, 2024 a huge container ship called the MV Dali slammed into the Francis Scott Key bridge in the Baltimore harbor causing the bridge to fall into the bay. The bridge spanned the Patapsco River and was a vital shipping port on the east coast with easy access to I-95. According to ZeroHedge the port supports 15,330 direct jobs and 139,180 indirect jobs in Maryland according to the Maryland government’s website.
This is a disaster, there were lives lost, to be determined how many. The supply chains will be snarled again throughout the mid-Atlantic, and it will be costly to rebuild although Biden has already offered to pay for it. Just sell some more treasuries to pay for it. It’s a rounding error, but that isn’t exactly what I want to consider here today. We saw a Russian incident just last week and the authorities were quick, my coffee was still hot, when I read that terrorism was off the table regarding the bridge. Retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn says that would be a mistake. He was the national security advisor for Trump and said hold on. How did they know so fast that it wasn’t. Balticshipping.com shows the captain was a Ukrainian. Now is this a coincidence, but there have been a lot of coincidences lately. A lot of unexplained attacks on infrastructure too. This key port, total blockage, in the dead of night, while we are fighting multiple shadow wars. Let’s stop being so naïve and consider the possibility.
As we have in the past, we must consider who wins and loses in such a tragedy. Car imports are a huge factor here. Baltimore imports more autos than any other port in the US. Mazda, Mercedes, Subaru, and Mitsubishi have the most exposure to the port via ZeroHedge. Also majorly affected was Consol energy which has a coal terminal there and their stock was down 10% while American Sugar Refinery Inc. said its Domino Sugar refinery would run out of sugar in 6-8 weeks as it was dependent on incoming ships. There are elections to win, and the automobile markets have been wrecked and now we will have a shortage of cars and domestic dealers will have a chance to sell more cars. This could decimate European auto exports? Hmmm, possible, but a stretch. An environmental group angry at Consol energy disabled the steering and power on the ship, maybe but a stretch. An anti-obesity activist group angry at the use of refined sugars in cereal caused the bridge to collapse, unlikely. The United Coast Guard Yard is located just inside the wreckage on Curtis Bay. It is the Coast Guard’s sole shipbuilding and major repair facility. Could this be a narco terrorist? Perhaps. Perhaps stevedore Ziggy Sobotka’s duck got loose and distracted the pilot or perhaps we will never know and perhaps it is an accident. I don’t believe in coincidences, so when I see a pipeline get blown up and no one knows who did it, and then Israel attacked and no one knew how they got the surprise on Israel, and now I see a ship destroy a terminal of ours, I think what do we not know. I certainly will not believe what I am spoon fed, especially when it is not a terrorist attack before they have even finished the search and rescue. Come on people…
There is a saying that Generals like to fight the last war. Ships were king in the 19th century, and then in World War II it was the airplane that provided the advantage. Now guns and missiles prove airplanes to be less effective etc. What if this is the next war? What if it is sabotage? Just last week Ukraine continued bombing Russian oil refineries. The Houthis are using missiles to force ships to avoid the Red Sea. Israel is now firing missiles deep into Syria and Lebanon. We might be telling the world that we are not involved, but you can bet the Syrians don’t believe that. “According to The Associated Press, civilians were among the dead, including women, children, and a World Health Organization (WHO) official:
Dama Post, a pro-government media outlet in Syria, said the strikes targeted the provincial capital of Deir el-Zour that carries the same name, and the towns of Mayadeen and Boukamal. It said 20 people, including women and children, were among the dead.
The World Health Organization said one of its team members, engineer Emad Shehab, was killed in one of the strikes that hit his building. It said Shehab, 42, served as a WHO focal point for water, sanitation, and hygiene in the province since 2022.” In fact, some Syrian forces blamed the US directly and said it was our planes. We have an open society and these are angry people with their citizens able to infiltrate our country at will, and I feel like our government is still thinking it can win the war in the Pacific in 1944 with the biggest destroyers.
These thoughts are percolating in my head as I also read in ZeroHedge about Taiwan conducting very provocative anti-aircraft defense exercises in the face of China. That’s right, they now have the Patriot missile and anti-aircraft artillery systems provided by Washington. This comes while Taiwan is ramping up defense spending, and building, and launching new warships. I don’t know why people are not assuming that we are progressing towards even more multi-conflict wars.
“In the United States, lawmakers are taking steps to prepare for a potential future invasion by China’s military of the self-ruled island backed by the US.
“Fears of possible conflict across the Taiwan Strait are spurring state-level legislation aimed to identify and mitigate the potential local impact of hostilities,” Politico reported last weekend.
“Since the beginning of the year, lawmakers in Arizona, Nebraska and Illinois have introduced versions of the Pacific Conflict Stress Test Act — bills that impose checklists of potential local vulnerabilities in supply chains and infrastructure security if Beijing eventually uses force to ‘reunify’ with Taiwan,” the report said.” Well I might have been wrong on my timing, but I still think this conflict is escalating.
This is my base premise for how to break the United States dollar. You get the US to spend itself to death. Ukraine, Israel, Guyana, port rebuilds, Taiwan defense, and hell you can probably throw in Covid in there as well. If that was planned and it might have been, we spent trillions so it worked.
Meanwhile in Europe, French president Macron has been talking about supporting Ukraine with troops because everyone knows Ukraine is losing and losing bad. Ukraine is bombing Russian refineries in a desperate attempt to slow Russia down. Meanwhile the gas prices are going up here because there is less and less oil available to hit the market and an increased oil price hurts Biden’s chances in the election and ruins any chance Powell has of getting inflation down. If Powell can’t lower rates soon, there will be even more banks, real estate projects, and businesses to go bust. They have to lower rates and Powell knows it because there is no other logical reason he would still be wanting to lower rates with inflation going higher, the stock market making new highs, and the economy growing. Well, the debt expense is getting high, but apparently that only bothers me as we just keep spending. This is why Biden is telling Ukraine stop the drone attacks and why they are trying to get Israel to stop with their attacks on Hamas in Rafah. Unfortunately, the world knows that we are as rudderless as that containership in Baltimore harbor. The world knew not when we left Afghanistan but how. Say what you will about Donny T., he gets far better check marks on foreign policy than Joey B.
The logistics world is not going to be happy this summer. The Panama canal is going dry and has a limited number of ships being allowed through it, the Red Sea is a ghost town as the Houthis are in control despite operation Prosperity Guardian, Taiwan is building and launching new warships in the South China or Philippine Sea, and the mid Atlantic just had their largest port get closed down indefinitely. Prices for shipping and insurance are going up and that will affect import prices everywhere and possibly cause shortages or outages. The globally connected world that we knew pre-Covid is rapidly disappearing before our eyes. We will have to do with less. That is a lesson we have been preaching on this site for some time now. Food will become more expensive, consumer products staples and discretionary, and also electronics will becoming more and more expensive to ship. Meanwhile our exports like agriculture will become more expensive and instead of having to do without an I-Phone on the other end of the line there will be countries that will see food disappear off their plates. That is a far bigger tragedy than higher prices in the US.
What we have is a boatload of uncertainty right now. We don’t know exactly what is going on, but we do have control of how we prepare for a more uncertain world. Oil, gold, bonds are things that tend to do well in uncertainty. I’m not that fond of every investment, but we can view history on what does well in uncertain times. Risky assets are even more risky now when we seem to be entering a fragile state geopolitically.
We have been talking about potential triggers for this coming crash, correction, or change in the markets and the accident in Baltimore didn’t seem to have much impact. I think people assume it to be an accident and perhaps it is, but it also seems like a long line of things that another country would do if they were trying to slowly weaken their largest adversary. I will simply leave you with this…
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
― Sun tzu, The Art of War
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
On this date in history… 60 years ago to be exact, the strongest earthquake ever recorded in the United States took place in Alaska ruining towns and villages and causing massive tsunamis felt hundreds of miles away.
Also born on this date… the great Cale Yarborough in Timmonsville, South Carolina.
Thank you for listening today and you can find all of our articles and more on our website cthomasprinter.com.