By John Richardson THE OMICRON outbreak is piling further pressure on already extremely stressed supply chains as Europe struggles to cope with the highly infectious variant. As my ICIS colleague, Tom Brown, said in this ICIS Insight article, tapping into market intelligence from our pricing editors: “The supply chain pressures that have dogged the European […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Deflation could already be here: implications for PE and PP
By John Richardson ONCE AGAIN, PLEASE don’t say I didn’t warn you. The switch from inflation to disinflation or deflation is already well underway, a lot sooner than my prediction of Q1 next year. American retailers, having spent months scaring customers with stories of shortages, were trying to lure them into stores with offers of […]
Stock Market Threats Far Wider Than Just North Korea
By John Richardson LAST WEEK’S steep fall in global stock markets was of course the result of rising US-North Korea geopolitical tensions. Some $1 trillion was wiped off equity values. We obviously all hope that the geopolitical tensions will ease. But that would still leave behind a bull-run in global equities that has mainly been […]
China To Drive Return To Global Deflation
By John Richardson THE Wall Street Journal agrees up with my blog: Two months after I warned that a slowdown in lending growth in China was a major threat to the global economy, its 1 May front-page article echoed my warning. Meanwhile, evidence continues to build that the pace of the credit slowdown is accelerating. First […]
The New World Of Demand, Trade And Competition
By John Richardson TOMORROW nearly always ended up being better than today for the polymers industry, thanks to the resilience of demand growth during the Economic Supercycle. What also made life easy was the assumption that global free trade would, like economies, usually advance rather than retreat. Pretty much a level playing was firmly in […]
How To Grow Sales In A Deflationary World
By John Richardson CHINA hugely increased its propylene and derivatives capacity to the point where by 2011, it became the first region or country where downstream propylene consumption surpassed that of ethylene. This didn’t mean booming actual demand for propylene and what it is used to make. Instead, it meant that lots of “empty factories” […]
Demographics And Economics: We Haven’t Even Had The Debate
By John Richardson JAPAN has seen two decades of deflation and rising debts. Everyone should now recognise that Abenomics have failed to resolve this crisis. Abenomics were always going to fail because you cannot print babies. What a pity that Western central bank chiefs didn’t take a long hard look at Japan years ago. Instead […]
2016: Trade Tensions, Social Unrest And Deflation
By John Richardson THE world by 2020 – as Paul Hodges and I discussed in Chapter 4 of our 2011 book, Boom Gloom & The New Normal – is going to look very different indeed from what most of us expected: A major shake-out will have occurred in Western consumer markets. Consumers will look for […]
China Jan-Feb Deflation Deepens, Growth Collapses
By John Richardson CHINA’S economy is now showing signs of extreme weakness, according official year-on-year data for January-February: Fixed asset investment, the biggest driver of growth in China’s economy, rose by 13.9% – the weakest rate of expansion since 2001. The 6.8% year-over-year growth in industrial production was “the weakest year-over-year reading ever outside the global […]
China’s Contribution To The New Global Financial Crisis
By John Richardson YOU will be committing career suicide if you hold on to the idea that China’s problems only amount to a lack of “old style” economic stimulus – and that a bit of old style stimulus is just around the corner. It is essential that you therefore waste no more time by listening […]