Panama Fever - Panama Canal

I wanted to read about the Panama Canal because it’s my aunt’s dream to take a cruise on the Panama Canal before she dies, and she bought me a book for my 25th Birthday written about it. The Panama Canal is one of the most amazing and important pieces of construction ever built The Panama Canal was built in the early to mid-1500’s, however there was some controversy’s related to the Panama Canal opening it up to enemies or other workers.

France in 1879 started raising the funding for the Panama Canal and doing the research to create the Panama Canal a 2-6 trillion-dollar project. They created shares of 50 francs that paid 4% which was an attractive investment in the project. The Panama Canal would create 600 billion dollars a year of revenue for the French- in todays dollars. The Suez Canal was a very attractive investment that paid 17% dividends, so the Panama Canal was an attractive project to invest in and build.

France in 1879 posted a journalistic article writing about the Panama Canal and potential routes that they could take. The French paid and sent a highly respected young engineer named Gaston Blanchet - he lined up his Franco-Belgium company and did research in Panama to find the lowest elevation place and where the best place would be. They sent more engineers on the Lafayette ship to Panama and some even wanted to live there because one even had a kid with a local. It was a very profitable project- producing more revenue the any company today.

The Panama Canal would create 90 million dollars a year in the French currency which converted into 2015 money is 600 billion dollars a year for the French Economy and the cost of making the canal at just under 6 trillion dollars in today’s US Dollars. A revised more hopeful estimate in todays United States dollars was 2 trillion dollars of funding to build the Panama Canal. The shares funding the Suez Canal were worth four times the original price and paid a 17% dividend. For comparison lots of times in the United States stock market even during times of high economic growth it is it bed said that 4-7% a year is normal and 9-11% is very, very, very high so this was a massive return. They used newspapers to promote and sell there shares.

The French used newspapers and the press to advocate for the funding of the shares of the Panama Canal to be built for the extremely expensive 2 trillion - in us dollars - canal. The Europeans drank the river water and frequently go sick from it getting high fevers. There was also a plethora of ticks that could give them diseases such as Lyme diseases and gangrene.  The Jungle came to life at night with problematic insects that bit them – eating their flesh and giving them diseases.

The Panama Canal was a great project that produced trillions of dollars in investments to build and produced hundred of billions of dollars in revenue even in the very beginning. My perspective of this project was that it cost 3.5%-10.5% of todays GDP in the United States to build and created 1.25 Percent of Americas GDP in revenue yearly even back then, so it was a very profitable important project. The Panama Canal was one of the most key project ever built for the United States allowing them to move their navy west or east to the pacific or Atlantic Ocean when necessary. The Panama Canal was a very cool project and the Jungle at that time had hundreds to thousands of problematic insects that came out at night to bite and give diseases to the workers and engineers that worked on the Panama Canal.