Cargo & Collateral

Macro-finance and shipping, read through balance sheets and monetary architecture.

Seaborne trade and monetary systems can be read the same way: as claims and obligations. Forwarder and carrier working capital, chartering and freight rates, chokepoint transits and tonne-mile demand, ship finance and marine insurance on one side; repo markets, debt management offices, central-bank balance sheets and the euro-area settlement plumbing on the other. Defence appears occasionally and on the same terms: rearmament as a working-capital problem before a capability one.