By John Richardson THE New Normal is a journey of discovery, as my colleague Paul Hodges pointed out in his blog post yesterday. As this latest global economic crisis develops, it is vital that we start the journey otherwise many of us will end up out of work. Some chemicals companies will simply not survive […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Abenomics Are Wrong For Japan And The World
By John Richardson TEN years, a Japanese contact told me, “When we eventually work out the right set of economic policies to get us out of our problems, we will all get behind those policies.” I gave him a call last week to update our discussion and he said, “The good news is we […]
South Korea: No Room For Complacency
By John Richardson I have long loved South Korea, ever since I first visited the country back in the late 1990s. The sheer guts, determination and get-up-and-go of South Koreans have to be admired, especially when you put this into the context of the almost total devastation inflicted by the Korean War. And South Korea continues […]
China Exports: Whatever It Takes To Boost Volumes
By John Richardson HERE is a reminder of some key facts about the Chinese economy: Investment, in the form of local real estate, infrastructure and industrial capacity accounts for around 50% of the country’s GDP. China’s total investment levels are 10-15% of GDP higher than comparable countries, such as Japan and South Korea, when they […]
China Polyethylene: What To Tell Your Boss
By John Richardson YOU are a junior researcher working for a global polyethylene (PE) producer. This is your opportunity to help change “group thinking” and so greatly improve your career prospects. It is not going to be easy, especially if your boss tells you, “I’ve been here many times before. China is just […]
European Petrochemicals: Making Money Despite Deflation
By John Richardson THE European petrochemicals industry has done staggeringly well since 2008 thanks to operating rate discipline, skillful inventory management and feedstock flexibility – for example, the INEOS and SABIC initiatives to import low cost ethane from the US. And in 2014, the region’s cracker operators have even been able to increase average operating […]
Coming To Terms With Global Deflation
By John Richardson YOU used to be able to take, say, a World Bank report on GDP growth forecasts, plug that into your spread sheet, look at low per capita consumption of chemicals and polymers in the developing world and your job used to be pretty much done. As a researcher working for any chemicals […]
China Drives Down Yuan To Protect Jobs
By John Richardson WE first warned in December 2011 that as China’s economic reforms accelerated, Yuan depreciation was a strong possibility. And then in May of last year, we picked up the theme again by again suggesting that as growth in China slowed, Beijing would attempt to support the economy through boosting exports via a […]
Central Banks Chase The Inflation Illusion
By John Richardson IT was Milton Friedman who famously said “inflation is always and everywhere a monetary problem”. This widely accepted economic wisdom is based on the following premise: Excessive expansion of the money supply is inherently inflationary. And so one can still argue that all that central banks have to do is to keep […]
Regional Trading Blocs: Globalisation In Reverse
By John Richardson HAS anyone out there considered the possibility that we could end up with a series of regional trading blocs as globalisation goes into rapid reverse? Or have chemicals companies instead come up with one-dimensional outlooks that assume the world will become more, rather than less, open, thus making it easy to shift […]
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