A ghost fleet -- in fact, many ghost fleets anchored in waters all over the world -- are what you get when the global economy tanks and trade slows dramatically.
When I look at that photo I'm reminded of a hideous moment I had just before Christmas a few years ago. I had picked up an ad circular which was advertising a 13-inch-tall, battery-powered, talking Homer Simpson Giant Pez dispenser (you can't make this stuff up). And I suddenly realized that a significant part of both the Chinese and American GDP was based on such totally, utterly, useless crap. Crap I would pay money not to have in my house. (Consider, for instance, the uniformly poor-quality and entirely superfluous junk sold by the Oriental Trading Company -- may they go out of business.)
And there sit the empty ships which used to carry such Pez dispensers and silly straws and amusing plastic eyeglasses. The world has discovered it doesn't need so much pointless junk. The Western middle class simply doesn't have the credit anymore.
The folks at Zero Hedge put up more maps of unchartered / unused ships in various places on the Earth, including this map of some of the most active ports in the US:
The red dots are the unused ships, while the green dots are ships in use. Again, please follow the link and scroll through to see the red dots off the coast of England, China, Dubai, etc.
Meanwhile, the Dow and the S&P were up substantially today, as they have been for 8 of the past 9 business days. Who cares about a collapse in global trade when Bernanke has cheery things to say? Hurrah-- Dow 10K is coming back, baby!!
The "markets" are just a casino now, disconnected from the real world.
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