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Asian Chemical Connections

Dear Mr Abbott, What On Earth Have You Done?

By John Richardson INNOVATION has to be the cornerstone of Australia’s economy from now on because of these two reasons: 1.)    The China-led resources boom is over  and so Australia can no longer just dig stuff out of the ground and send it to China. 2.)    Australia, like all developed countries, has an ageing population. […]

Australia At An Economic Crossroads

By John Richardson THERE is no such thing as level playing field when it comes to the chemicals industry and, for that matter, probably any other industry. China has long-subsidised many of its industries through soft loans for new projects, cheap land, cheap electricity and tax breaks in special economic zones. Some projects in Southeast […]

China’s Capital Flight Challenge

By John Richardson CHINA’s economic statistics continue to take your breath away. For example, in 1993, the country’s nominal GDP totalled around $613bn compared with estimates of around $9 trillion for 2013. But who owns most of this new-found wealth? “Using various surveys and methodologies, the general consensus is that the wealthiest 1% of urban […]

Australia: Nice Work If You Were Able To Get It

By John Richardson BACK in the late 1990s, the blog held a discussion with an Australian petrochemicals industry executive. He described his country’s approach to free trade, or rather the lack of it, as “to put it politely, naïve, and to put is less politely, plain stupid.” He was referring to how Australia had aggressively […]

Come On Mr Abbott, Please

By John Richardson TONY Abbott, in his victory speech on Saturday following the Coalition victory in the Australian Federal Election, renewed his pledge to scrap the carbon tax, stop the boat people and bring the budget back into surplus. Come on Mr Abbott, please. The blog has to admit, in this time of nonsensical sound-bite politics, […]

The Best Of All Possible Worlds

Source of graph: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/    By John Richardson “Candide, the classic novel of the great French writer Voltaire, is a satirical description of a young man who has been taught that ‘everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds’,” wrote Paul Hodges in this blog post last week. Thus, we have […]

Multiple Energy Options In China

Source of table: The Economist   By John Richardson WHEN you are an energy giant such as Shell you can afford to explore multiple avenues in an effort to profit from China’s long-term energy needs. Thus Shell re-affirmed last week that it plans to invest $1bn in a year in exploiting the country’s vast shale-gas […]

Energy, Politics & Economics

  Source of graph: http://thinkprogress.org/    By John Richardson DANIEL Yergin’s superb book, The Prize, describes how the history of the 20th century was shaped by oil and gas. Now we are entering a new era. Some 600,000 jobs have already been created by the US shale and oil gas revolutions, leading to hopes of […]

China’s Demographic Crisis

                      Chinese govt poster promoting the one-child policy       By John Richardson IF all you can remember is strong emerging markets growth, then it is easy to be misled into only building into your scenarios the notion that China and India are merely pausing for economic breath. Conventional wisdom remains that this is, decidedly, the […]

China To Grow at 3 Percent

By John Richardson THE possibility that China’s economy may not expand as rapidly in the future as in the past is never discussed in public by resources-company CEOs, said an Australian-based stockbroker. His comments ring true for petrochemicals, also. The blog is struggling to find a senior executive willing to discuss this possibility on the […]

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