Drawing on previously neglected sources, economist Marc Levinson shows how the container transformed economic geography, devastating traditional ports such as New York and London which had not yet facilities to handle them.
When in 1978 the PriceWaterhouseAssociate team - which included yours truly - acted as consultants to the Penang Port Commission, it gave no thought to this already emerging phenomenon in its traffic and revenue forecasts but instead revalued existing port structures and recalculated depreciation rates as if the age of breakbulk cargo would never end.
This farce was made even more farcical as all the team's reports turned out to be almost mirror images of reports previously written by one of the team members for the port of Mogadishu in Somalia. I had not been aware of this fact until the fly-in-fly-out PWA "supervisor" during one of his frequent visits only half-jokingly remarked, "We'd all be in deep shit if ever our photocopier breaks down and we could no longer simply replace the word 'Mogadishu' with the word 'Penang' in all our reports."
Until that moment I had always stood in admiring awe as I watched that particular team member arrive in the office each morning, gaze for a while into the middle distance while tapping a long pencil against his puckered lips, and then, with estonishing ease and seemingly out of thin air, drew up reports of amazing erudition. The only thing amazing about this feat was his almost photographic memory with which he recalled those Mogadishu reports which he always had read the night before.
US$1 was worth approx. AUS$0.88; therefore, US$27,000 = AUS$23,760
which was about twice an accountant's average salary in Australia in 1978
That kind of fake "management consulting" convinced me that I was in the wrong profession and I never worked for one of the "Big Five" (as they were then) accounting firms again. However, it is all grist for the mill as I read "The Box" which is the amazing story of how the humble shipping container reshaped shipping and with it the global economy.
