Time, 20 May 2009, Neel Chowdhury
The World Trade Organization predicts the volume of global trade will shrink by 9% in 2009, the worst fall since the Great Depression. As a result, a fleet of empty ships lie idly at anchor just outside the territorial waters of Singapore, the world's busiest port. "The pile up of ships in the Straits is a reflection of the collapse in trade until the early part of this year," says P.K. Basu, Asia economist for the Daiwa Institute of Research. Mirroring that drop is the Baltic Dry Index, which tracks the average cost of shipping a container of goods. It has plummeted more than any stock market, from a peak of 11,000 in mid-2008 to roughly 2,600 today.
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