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182 Million iPads

BusinessWeek Writes: Risk Ahoy: Maersk, Daewoo Build the World’s Biggest Boat

triple e investwithalex 

The Triple-E’s capacity is 18,000 TEU. (Most containers today are 40 feet long, so the number carried will be closer to 9,000.) Laid end to end, a single Triple-E’s shipping containers would stretch for 68 miles. “In the late 1990s we were like, ‘Oh my God, a 6,000-TEU ship,’ ” says Peter Shaerf, a managing director at AMA Capital Partners, an investment bank specializing in the maritime industry. “Then you go to 13,000 and now 18,000. I don’t know where it stops.” Practically speaking, a Triple-E, in one trip, could take more than 182 million iPads or 111 million pairs of shoes from Shanghai to Rotterdam. Such a trip would take 25 days and burn 530,000 gallons of fuel. That comes to 0.003 gallons per iPad.

Read the rest of the article here

This is truly a massive ship.  A marvel of engineering, capable of carrying massive amounts of cargo.

However, bare with me for a second as we look at it from another perspective.  I think everyone knows the Skyscraper index analogy by now. Basically, the theory says that when the biggest building in the world is built at any given time or nation it spells the end of prosperity and marks the beginning of rough times ahead.

For example,

  • Empire State Building was completed in 1931 or during the darkest hours of the great depression.
  • Chicago Sears Towers was completed in 1973 or near the bottom of a severe 1972-74 recession.
  • Burj Khalifa in Dubai was completed in 2010 close to what some believe was a cyclical high in oil  prices in 2008.  
  • Now China is scheduled to complete the world tallest building “Sky City” in 2014 as it stands close to an economic disaster previously discussed.

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So, the question becomes….. Does Triple E simply represent an engineering marvel or does it stand as a symbol of peak in global economic trade (at least for the time being). Let’s see. 

With the US being on the brink of another recession(if not already in one), with no end of economic troubles in Europe, with emerging markets imploding left and right, with China being in a massive speculative and misallocation bubble, I do not see how global trade can increase that much here over the next few years. As such, Triple E might in fact represent the peak in global trade for the time being.  

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