What's Old Is New Again

In the 1850s, Cornelius Vanderbilt setup the Accessory Transit Company to transport people and goods (mostly people to and gold from California) between the American east and west coasts via a route through Nicaragua, largely on the Rio San Juan and Lake Nicaragua.  Vanderbilt took pay off money from the operators of a route that was a precursor to the Panama Canal and shut down his Nicaragua operation,  although he retained the right to build a Nicaragua Canal, which he never did.

Well, over 150 years later, the idea of a Nicaragua Canal is percolating again.

A Dutch consortium has won a contract to conduct a pre-feasibility study into the construction of a canal through Nicaragua.

Royal HaskoningDHV and Ecorys are to carry out the study which is costing $720,000 and is due to be completed early 2013.

The canal will cater for larger ships than the Panama Canal and will be Central America’s second main waterway, the consortium says.

I think it's a great idea, let's build some redundancy into the global trading system.