ABSTRACT
We surveyed what was written on “business cycle”-BC by two famous
economists: Keynes and Schumpeter; and what was written on: maritime cycle by
two maritime/marine economists, less famous: Stopford and Goulielmos!
Remarkably, all sources led us to one conclusion: “a BC is caused by demand and supply (of goods & services) intensified or not by local or global Wars
and Canal closures!” The BC’s duration is definitely changeable. There was a clear
tendency, however, for the BC shipping to become shorter, and to arrive sooner,
as time went by. Also, the bad times are longer nowadays and the good times
depart quickly, except for the so-called exceptional boom (2003-2008)! The
capitalist system permits monopoly profits, and then it takes an unknown time
to eliminate them! Ship-owners “enjoyed” the monopoly profits from 2003 to
2008, at a rather desperate previous time. Then, (2001-2), ship-owners were
looking at their industry recording 24 business cycles till that time, since
1743, and 1-six yearly cycle, since 1981… Believing that monopoly profits
appear once in 60 years in their industry, ship-owners waited for the next boom… which finally arrived (2003)1.
This paper revealed that the monopoly profits of 2003-2008 were responsible for
the longer depression by 5 years (2009-2018). In the capitalist system,
consumption is the steady value, but investment, by resting on businessmen,
depends on an agreement between investors’ expectations—about
efficiency—and their realization of them (Keynes)!