Global economy continues to wither as West Coast ports remain shut down

(NaturalNews) Has the world's economy officially tanked? One radio talk show host thinks so, and he has some data to back it up.

In a blog post on his website, Dave Hodges -- host of The Common Sense Show -- notes that economic indices are bottoming out and that's in large part due to a proposed agreement called the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Electronic Freedom Foundation describes as "a secretive, multinational trade agreement that threatens to extend restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement."

The forces behind the agreement, notes Hodges, have used their influence to stall delivery of critically important commodities until it is fully implemented among member nations.

As such, he says, those forces are going to be responsible "for the crash caused by the failure to move product through the world's ports."

Hodges, in his post, writes that cargo and container ships are piling up along the U.S. West Coast, like these in the small port of Tacoma, Washington, (the man narrating the video, Dr. William Mount, says this is all part of a plan by the Obama Administration to destroy the dollar and reduce the U.S. population).

"We don't have six to eight months"

Hodges elaborates further:

The backlog of ships is a crisis being done on purpose because the private multinational corporations want to empty the shelves in supermarkets nationwide for three or four weeks is designed to force the American people to approve the blackmail contained in the Trans Pacific Partnership. This is the economic end-game which will permit these multinational corporations to become nation-states across the planet.

Hodges says that most people will simply fail to notice the threat until they see they can no longer buy food at the grocery store, or when vital mail-order items like prescription drugs are no longer being shipped.

Most will remain in denial, he says, until the truth can no longer be hidden -- or denied.

"The unions have now been idled, at major American shipping ports, because the multinational corporate owners of the shipping companies are keeping their ships filled with perishable goods at sea until all governmental opposition to the fast-tracked TPP is ended," Hodges wrote.

In early February, Reuters and CNBC reported that a U.S. West Coast port strike was pushing up the cost of freight shipping rates as idled ships stacked up, waiting to be offload and re-loaded.

"Dozens of container ships are lying in wait off the large U.S. West Coast ports of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego. Many of them have been waiting more than a week to enter port to unload or take on new cargoes, according to Thomson Reuters shipping data," reported Reuters, noting that East Coast ports remain open.

CNBC reported that the lingering strike was beginning to affect retailers:

A prolonged shutdown of course would be worse--and it would hit more than just the retail community. The National Retail Federation and National Association of Manufacturers estimate a 10-day shutdown could levy a $2.1 billion per day hit to the overall economy as about half of the nation's international imports come into the country via the West Coast ports.

Running out of goods - and time

In this video, Los Angeles City Councilman Joe Buscaino says that once a contract is reached it will take six to eight weeks to offload the more than 30 cargo ships within a mile-and-a-half of the LA Port, but it will take "months" for operations "to get back to normal."

Hodges notes that the U.S. economy does not have "six to eight months" to recover; indeed, he says, "it does not have six to eight days."

"As America races toward her date with destiny, there is yet another 'fundamentally transforming' event coming her way and that event is known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)," he wrote.

See his full post here.

Mount's video is here.

Sources:

http://www.thecommonsenseshow.com

https://www.eff.org

https://www.youtube.com

http://www.reuters.com

http://www.cnbc.com