Homestead mailing list

["Don Bowen" <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

> Not gonna happen.  All the presently available $250B is rapidly going down
> a rat hole with banks doing with it EXACTLY the same thing they did with
> their assets to begin with.

World wide shipping is currently in a crisis as letters of credit are drying
up.  Cargo is sitting on ships and docks as receivers cannot pay for them
and ships are laying empty as shippers are unable to get cargo.  Rates for
the largest ships are known as Capesize peaked in may at over $230,000 a
day.  Recent rates are under $6000 for a ship that needs $15,000 minimum.  

Look for "World trade grinds to a halt as letters of credit vanish"
In
http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2008/11/debt-rattle-november-3-2008-y-
obama.html

"    The credit drought is undermining international trade in goods and raw
materials with savage increases in the cost of funding for exporters. At the
same time, buyers of goods are being denied access to letters of credit -
the banking instruments that are the nuts and bolts of global trade. HSBC, a
leading trade finance bank, has said that the cost of guaranteeing a letter
of credit, a routine instrument used for payment of goods, has doubled."

It is more than just banks having problems, it is everything else.  Bernanke
and Paulson need to stop looking out for their friends and notice what else
is going on.

Don Bowen  KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html