You heard it here first, but it’s reassuring to know that the world’s largest sea-freight forwarder concurs.

“Because of declines in consumption in the West and production in the East, the global container fleet’s enormous cargo capacity can no longer be filled … The U.S. economy needs to recover before global trade can start growing again.” – Reinhard Lange, CEO, Kuhne + Nagel

Maybe – just maybe – someone with stature will put two-and-two together and announce that in order for the “U.S. economy to recover”, “consumption in the West” must be stimulated in order to increase “production in the East”.

The only way to halt the decline of “consumption in the West”, however, would be to put spending money – in the form of weekly paychecks – in the hands of consumers. U.S. consumers. But with half-a-million U.S. workers being added to the nation’s unemployment roles every month, that weekly paycheck scenario is pure fantasy.

In spite of the disinformation published daily by the mainstream U.S. media, this so-called “Great Recession” is not “bottoming out”. Here’s what the local papers should be covering:

“U.S. Foreclosure Filings Set Third Record-High in Five Months” – Bloomberg.com
“Hutchinson Port Profit Plunges as Recession Saps Trade” – Bloomberg.com
“Retail Sales in U.S. Unexpectedly Declined in July” – Bloomberg.com
“CSAV Lost $ 413 Million in First Half” – The Journal of Commerce
“New Economic Numbers Could Dampen Recovery Talk” – NPR.org
“Retail sales dip unexpectedly, jobless claims rise” – AP
“FDIC closes Colonial BancGroup” – AP
“Amid US gloom, oil posts biggest loss in two weeks” – Reuters

Do these horror stories signal a “bottoming out”? A recovery?

The pretenders are right in one respect, though – the 21st Century Great Recession is a thing of the past. But that’s because it was replaced by the 21st Century Great Depression several months ago, and unless someone with clout realizes that revitalizing U.S. shipyards is the only possible way to pull out of the nosedive, our country’s downward economic spiral will continue to accelerate.

Global warming, climate change, CO2 emissions, peak oil, healthcare, illegal immigrants, the wars against drugs and imagined “terrorists”etc., etc., … it’s all double talk. All those smokescreens combined couldn’t produce the number of jobs needed for an economic recovery. Only shipbuilding could generate the 50 million jobs needed.

As Casey Stengel would say, “You can look it up.”