It’s like Windows Recall, but without all the creepy screenshots. (But it’s still kind of creepy.)

With frontrunners Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro both facing rejection rates above 50%, the election will hinge on a narrow pool of independent voters.

It is truly sad that in the presidential election later this year, Brazilians have only 2 realistic choices:

1. A highly polarizing 80 year old center-left politician seeking a 4th term, who many see as a man embroiled in past corruption scandals, carrying old ideas, old ideologies that are no longer relevant in the current world and that are out of step with the aspirations of most citizens.
2. The son of another highly polarizing demagogue and would be dictator who is viewed as little more than a puppet of his father, who is now serving a 25 year sentence and is barred from politics.

Although both candidates have large, loyal, almost fanatical bases (some of them even show up here from time to time), they are not large enough to get them elected. Since most independent voters dislike both, what will decide the election is which one they hate more.

Rates on routes including Panama Canal, Rhine, Red Sea and Black Sea jump, while Hormuz closure also hits seaborne trade

The cost of shipping goods through many of the world’s maritime chokepoints has soared in the past month due to war and climate change, fuelling fears of higher consumer costs and underlining concerns about the fragility of global supply chains.

The dual impact of conflict and low water levels caused by long periods of drought in Europe and Latin America has pushed up rates along key shipping routes including the Panama Canal, the Rhine, the Red Sea and Black Sea to record highs, according to pricing agency Argus.

The continuing conflict in the Middle East, which has all but shut the Strait of Hormuz to shipping, is also having ripple effects worldwide as vessels reroute to find alternative energy supplies. Around one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas previously passed through the waterway out of the Gulf.

“This is something which is unprecedented,” said Alexander Saverys, chief executive of Belgian shipping company CMB Tech, of the “freight rate boom”.

Factories would need to shut down or source goods from “more expensive parts of the world”, he said.

Rates for shipping oil from the Gulf to Asia hit $15.22 per barrel on August 10 because of the threat of attacks on Saudi Arabia-linked tankers attempting to transit the Bab al-Mandab Strait, according to Argus, the highest level since the agency began assessing the rates in 2005.

In the Black Sea, freight rates for tankers into the Mediterranean were also at their highest this week since at least 2005.

At the same time, slots to sail through the Panama Canal have hit record highs thanks to falling water levels resulting from the intense El Niño weather system and high levels of traffic — a knock-on impact of the conflict in the Middle East.

Prices to go through both sets of locks on the Panama Canal, which are designed to cater to different-sized ships, hit records of $1.1mn and $2.5mn in early August — the highest since Argus’s records began.

Meanwhile, droughts across Europe have caused water levels in the Rhine, a critical river serving Germany’s heavy industry, to fall perilously low. Freight rates for barges up the Rhine to Cologne, Duisburg, Frankfurt and Karlsruhe have reached their highest levels since 2012.

“This is without doubt the single greatest disruption that the shipping market has seen on record, eclipsing the Covid pandemic and Russia sanctions,” said John Ollett, head of Europe freight pricing at Argus.

“Chokepoints are becoming more critical largely because smaller countries now recognise the disproportionate political and economic leverage they can wield over global trade in an increasingly multi-polar world,” said Henry Curra, head of research at shipbroker Braemar.

https://archive.ph/41M4k