Ash cloud’s economic fallout reverberates throughout globe

Four hundred tons of flowers sat rotting in the cold room of an airport in Kenya over the weekend, waiting to be shipped to Europe. These flowers are among the first collateral damage of the Icelandic ash cloud which has turned most of Europe’s airspace into a no-fly zone and delayed travel for some 6.8 million people.

As the high altitude ash plume from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajökull volcano halts air travel around Europe and beyond, we look at another impact the global grounding has made: on commodity trades. Economist Marc Levinson, author of “The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger,” unpacks what this rare event reveals about our dependency on shipping and air travel in a globally interconnected economy.

We also talk to Doug Cameron, Dow Jones Chicago Bureau Chief. He oversees manufacturing and transportation coverage for the newswire service.