By John Richardson YOU might well have forgotten the Turkish lira crisis because of the US/China trade war. But Turkey is crucial for the health of the global polyolefins business because of the size of its imports. Before the US fell out with Turkey, resulting in the collapse of the lira, we had expected that […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Turkey Crisis: Implications For Polyolefins And Global Economy
By John Richardson THE first ramification of the Turkey crisis is that the collapse of the lira raises questions over how Turkish importers will be able to afford the dollars to pay for some of the polyolefins imported since the crisis began. Then comes the issue of what happens to Turkish polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene […]
The New Global Financial Crisis: Emerging Market Bonds
By John Richardson EXACTLY how the new global financial crisis will gather momentum is becoming clearer by the day. Greatly adding to this clarity was the latest Bank for International Settlements (BIS) quarterly report, which was released earlier this week. The BIS warned that: Off-shore lending in US dollars had soared to $9 trillion, and, […]
China: Sweat The Lending Data
By John Richardson AS business slowly gets back to normal following the Lunar New Year, everyone will be scrabbling around for indications about whether the January downturn in China was just a short-term blip, or something more significant. Confidence that things are back to normal might be taken from this Forbes article, which quotes […]
Asia Ex-China: The Outlook For 2014 And Beyond
By John Richardson IN a special series of blog posts over the next few weeks we will re-examine the outlook for the major Asian petrochemical producing countries, ex-China. The posts won’t necessarily appear every day, as important news events may require immediate analysis, but our aim is to finish the series by mid-October. Last month, […]