That's about how much it will take to build the supposed Nicaraguan Canal that would compete with the soon to be expanded Panama Canal. That from an executive from the Panama Canal Authority, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. That is well above the announced estimate of more like $50 billion the Nicaraguan government has said will be required. A Chinese company called HKND Group has been given a 50-year commission to build and then manage the canal, which if built would run some 276 kilometers from the country's Pacific coast to its Atlantic side. The full passage way would include the use of existing Lake Nicaragua for more than 100 km of that distance. Does HNBC have any hope of raising that kind of money? Right now, no one has any idea. It has said it has "identified" $200 million in potential finding - a long, long way from $70 billion or even $50 billion.

That's how many truck driving jobs will go unfilled in 2015, according to a new study from the American Trucking Associations this week. Last year, the industry was short 38,000 drivers, according to the ATA, meaning that in just one year, the number is projected to increase by nearly 10,000 drivers. Industry growth and a retiring workforce threaten to increase the driver shortage to as high as 175,000 by 2024 if the current trend holds, the ATA says. That would have a huge impact on capacity versus demand, though SCDigest has seen estimates of even higher driver shortage predictions in the past. The ATA projects that over the next decade, the trucking industry will need to hire 890,000 new drivers or 89,000 drivers per year to meet demand, much of which will result from retirements of current drivers. Maybe driverless trucks will solve the problem in the end.