Financial innovations were involved in the development of VLCC, Very Large Crude Carriers, and then ULCC, Ultra Large Crude Carriers, as Khalili explains. Aristotle Onassis, one of the driving forces behind the gargantuanisation of ships, would begin by chartering a new ship to an oil company that needed transportation capacity but preferred not to own the assets involved, since it saw itself as being in the oil business rather than the shipping business. Having sold the charter, Onassis would use the promised revenue to insure the ship; then he would use the insurance as the guarantee that would secure the loan he needed to get the ship built. It is a beautiful little story about capital’s ability to generate more capital: you could say that the ship, non-existent at the process, wills itself into being through the magic of finance.
The single biggest enabling force behind the global economy might as well be invisible, even as it drives down workers’ pay and living conditions, as it contributes to climate change, as it reshapes the planet’s economic geography. And, of course, it helps to keep stuff cheap. Shipping is a modern miracle of efficiency, interconnection and technology. It might also be the definitive example of modern capitalism, at the moment of its peak supremacy over labour.
Majicman Notes 
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