February 11, 2014

Having Your Cake and Eating It: Panama and Us

By Christopher Chantrill
PANAMA CITY -- Here in Panama City the world is coming to an end as work stops on the Canal de Panama expansion. There's an argument over $1.6 billion to complete the job. According to Dan Molinski in the Wall Street Journal, the problem is that the Panamanians awarded the expansion contract to a consortium that bought the job. According to the guy on the canal tour boat, the Spanish construction firm that got the bid always underbids, and usually gets away with it. But not this time, according to the tour guide, because Panamanians have principles. If the consortium won't do the job, Panama can get the insurance company to pay up and continue with the project on its own, if that's what it takes. Of course, the rest of the time the tour guide is innocently telling us how canal pilots have a way of humiliating ship captains, how canal tariffs are carefully set up not just by weight but by cargo value, how a ship can reserve a transit a year and a half in advance by paying a...(Read Full Article)