Shipwreck.

The article focuses on the shipping industry. The once-glamorous world of international shipping has fallen victim to inflation; high interest rates and the slowdown in international trade. In becoming recklessly overextended, the ship-owners had lots of help from the banks. Some of the biggest banks in the world pumped money into shipping with an enthusiasm that ignored all the lessons of economic history. A ship that has no buyer is for all practical purposes an essentially worthless investment, and the banks are thus stuck with billions of dollars in theoretically valuable but by and large worthless collateral.