Home Blogs Chemicals and the Economy

Chemicals and the Economy

European auto sales increase versus 2008

Any improvement in the troubled auto sector is extremely good news for the chemical industry, after the battering of the past few months. Thus the blog welcomes news, as the chart shows, that European sales increased 2.4% in June, the first rise for over a year. Government support for scrapping older cars has led the […]

China’s bank lending soars

If you want a loan, go to China. That’s the message from the chart, courtesy of Credit Suisse, which shows the staggering growth in bank lending since the start of the year. Now, even the People’s Bank of China is starting to get concerned. Lending so far this year has reached $1trn, equal to a […]

California hands out IOUs instead of cash

Source: Wall Street Journal Everybody’s favourite Christmas film is ‘Its a Wonderful Life’, in which the hero rescues a failing US bank during the Depression. But until today, the blog had never realised that a major role model for the plot-line came from Chicago in 1932. Nouriel Roubini’s blog notes that the city saw the […]

Crude oil prices tumble on S&P 500 weakness

Sometimes, the blog gets lucky with its timing. A week ago, it wrote bearishly on crude oil markets, and suggested that “chemical companies need to keep a close eye on changing sentiment in financial markets”. By Friday, oil prices had tumbled 11%, as the US S&P 500 index continued to weaken from its 12 June […]

China’s petchem imports soar on oil price speculation

After yesterday’s post, Edwin Pang of Credit Suisse in Hong Kong has raised an interesting question over the likely rationale for China’s massive increase in petchem imports, such as polyethylene (PE), in 2009. As the chart shows, its monthly PE demand (production plus net imports), was very steady in 2007-8. It averaged 980kt in 2007, […]

China’s speculative surge slows

Q2 saw an outburst of speculative frenzy all around the world, and in a wide variety of financial markets. China’s Dalian futures market saw LLDPE volume soar to 80 million tonnes – around 4 times total annual world demand. China’s easy money policy meant it was easy to borrow to speculate on a quick recovery. […]

Global downsizing needed to rebalance supply and demand

The chemical industry has benefited from a benign paradigm over the past 25 years: • Demographics in the west have encouraged consumption, as the baby-boom generation reached middle age • Globalisation meant this could be achieved at lower cost, by outsourcing production to lower-wage countries in the east • Workers in the east saved their […]

IEA warns on economic downturn, lower oil demand

Crude oil markets have risen 60% in recent months, as traders speculate on a quick V-shaped economic recovery. But there are growing signs that reality, in the shape of evidence of falling US and global oil demand, may be about to reassert itself. Latest US statistics remain very negative: • Total oil product demand is […]

US demand bouncing along the bottom

The good news from the latest reports on US house prices and auto sales was simple – things have stopped getting worse. US house prices saw “some stabilisation in some regions” according to the S&P/Case Shiller Index for April. Whilst auto sales are clearly bouncing along the bottom, down “only” 29% in June versus May’s […]

Jump to page: