West Coast Ports Shut Down For Holiday Weekend: Supply Chain Halt Threatens Havoc On Reeling Economy
A week ago, when we wrote “Catastrophic Shutdown Of America’s Supply Chain Looms” As West Coast Port Worker Talks Break Down“, few people noticed… as was to be expected: after all with January’s retails sales just around the corner, retail sales that were supposed to surge after the vast December disappointment, nobody wanted reality to spoil the party.
Then, following the very disappointing January retail sales led to the worst back-to-back drop since Lehman (this time there was no polar vortex to blame), confirming the US economic situation is far worse than the panglossian cheerleaders, led by the Fed, would have you believe, people started to notice, especially when we presented dramatic footage showing that the Ports of LA and Long Beach harbor have become cargo ship and tanker parking lots.
Fast forward to today, when over the past 48 hours there has suddenly been a deluge of sellside reports, rushing to bring attention to this topic, such as the following:
- West Coast port disruptions likely to cloud outlooks as Q4 earnings approach – Goldman Sachs
- Port Slowdowns Intensifying, Risk Heightened Across Retail Space: Credit Suisse
- Further West Coast Port Disruption A Possibility – Deutsche Bank
- All’s not quiet at the Western ports – Bank of America
And so on. Why the dramatic shift in attention to what as our readers knew 10 days ago, could be a crippling event to the US economy? Simple: as we again explained last Thursday, “in an economy that is desperate for any “one-time, non-recurring” item to explain what is now global secular stagnation and economic slowdown, an excuse such as a port strike, or a harsh winter, or a strong dollar, or plunging crude, may be precisely the scapegoat that the central-planning doctor ordered.”
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