The amounts of metal ores, grain, coal, etc. (that is, materials that are raw materials for goods such as steel, bread, concrete, and electricity) that are being shipped have dropped off a cliff.
Think about that. The shipping of the entire planet has been paralyzed. What has done this is not a natural catastrophe, but a man-made one: the nearly total freezing of credit worldwide.
There is now no one who will issue entirely routine letters of credit and loans necessary for ships to take goods from one part of the world to another. What this means is that any place that is importing metal ore, grain, coal, etc., has been drawing down what it has in storage for more than a month. No company wants to admit this is happening because their stock price would collapse. So what will happen is that the company will suddenly cease functioning. There will suddenly be no bread, no work, no electricity in local areas all around the world. You may suddenly see domestic pasta, but not imported pasta, for example. This will trigger panic buying of all goods, even goods that are not actually in short supply. So, as soon as you see a spot shortage like this, don't be surprised if there is one thing not there today, 10 things not there tomorrow, and 100 things not there the next day.
The freezing of credit may also cause specialty goods to suddenly be unavailable. For example, there may be plenty of toner cartridges for printers from Company X, but no toner cartridges for printers from Company Y.
What you need to do is walk around your workplace and walk around your house and look at ever single thing and ask yourself: "If I couldn't buy a replacement for that for the next 6 months, would something in my life come to a screeching halt?"
Particularly if it is something cheap.
There is a YouTube video in which a guy describes how his family went to their cabin and found that a rubber seal for the water pump had broken. So, they got in their car and drove 20 miles to buy a tiny piece of rubber. He realized how much gasoline was burned just to obtain that tiny piece of rubber, but without it, the pump would not work and there would be no water...
My cousin has an auto glass business. I called him and explained the potential for spot shortages, and I asked him if there was anything, particularly a cheap thing, that if he couldn't get, would result in complete paralysis of his business.
He said: "Adhesive! If we don't have the adhesive to glue in the windshields, we can't do any work at all!"
He is now preordering a lot of adhesive.
That is a good example of the kinds of things to think about. The shortages may start tomorrow or within a few weeks, but when they start, it will be ferocious beyond belief... something completely outside living memory.
If you couldn't buy food for a few weeks, how bad would that be?
I hope I am completely totally wrong about this and that everyone will be laughing at me in a few months... but how is it possible for global shipping to drop so suddenly without catastrophic consequences? See the following two articles.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/shipping-holed-beneath-the-waterline-995066.html
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2008/10/international-trade-seizing-up-due-to.html
And then there is the problem of shipping containers being piled up in the wrong place. Since people cannot get the shipping containers, they cannot ship their goods.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=97001507
The shipbuilders are going bankrupt. The shipping companies are in danger of going the same way, and that is why this cannot be fixed overnight.
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