By John Richardson NOBODY SHOULD be surprised that the developing world has fallen behind in the battle to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as the region is a long way from recovering from the pandemic. Evidence to this effect emerged last week in comments made by Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA). […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Share buyback boost to US stocks a major danger as recession risks grow
Just to once again stress that what follows are as always my personal views, and are open to debate, based on the data. I look forward to the debate and together we can shine more light on critical issues for the chemicals industry By John Richardson SO MUCH, perhaps, for the boost to the broader […]
PE margins turn negative as economic risks build
By John Richardson CASH margins for Asian linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) for naphtha-based producers have turned negative for the first time since Q1 2015, according to an industry contact. And this is of course before the flood of new US LLDPE production arrives in Asia. No matter how you crunch the numbers, the likely increase […]
Bursting of the US debt bubble and effect on petchems
By John Richardson THE US economy is in a debt-induced bubble that will sooner or later burst with of course major negative consequences for the rest of the world. You cannot print babies. The huge amounts of money that the US Federal Reserve has pumped into the US economy since 2008 combined with last year’s […]
US Economic Rescue Fails On Missing Human Factor
By John Richardson THE US Federal Reserve thought it understood how the world worked, thanks to its FRB/US (Ferbus) computer model. “Assuming that the FRB/US model does a good job of capturing the macroeconomic implications of declining house prices, such an event does not pose a particularly difficult challenge for monetary policy,” John Williams, then […]
A Letter to Janet Yellen: Why People Expect Low Inflation
Last month, Janet Yellen, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve ( see picture on the left), admitted in a briefing to the Economic Club of New York that she was baffled by the lack of strong future inflation expectations amongst the American public. I thus thought it was worth sending an open letter to the […]
Butadiene An Extreme Example
By John Richardson BUTADIENE is an extreme example of what my fellow blogger Paul Hodges described yesterday as happening across several major petrochemicals markets. Panicky buyers have, just as they did last year, “bought forward” in the hope that by so doing they will hedge against even higher feedstock costs in the future. But this […]