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Chemicals and the Economy

US dollar rises as investors worry low-cost money may disappear

Nobody knows how the Great Unwinding of central bank stimulus policies will develop.  The world has simply never been in this position before.  Thus the senior economics and business correspondent of the Financial Times, John Plender, began an article this week: “In a market where asset prices are comprehensively rigged by central bankers, rational investment […]

You can’t print babies to create new demand

What would you have done 5 years ago, in 2009, if you had been given $16tn to restore global economic growth? Would you have boosted spending in areas such as education, health and infrastructure in the belief this would create a sustained boost to economic capability?  Would you have cut taxes in order to encourage entrepreneurs to develop new businesses and promote […]

Oil markets risk rapid repricing – Part 2

As the blog discussed yesterday, central banks have now kept oil prices above the historical $10-30/bbl range for 10 years. But can they remain there forever? What might bring them back in line with the fundamentals of supply/demand? And what would be the risks if this happened? The background can be simply stated: • Investors […]

Central banks pop champagne corks as stock markets soar

Central bankers mean well. But, of course, good intentions do not guarantee good results. Their intention since the start of the 2008 crisis has been to boost financial markets. They have therefore provided $tns of liquidity, which has indeed produced record highs in major stock market indices such as the S&P 500 and Dow Jones […]

Lessons from Japan’s ‘lost decade’

In December, the blog noted that Japanese policymakers saw clear parallels between the mistakes they made during the ‘lost decade’ of the 1990’s, and those being made today in the USA and other Western countries. The New York Times now has a fascinating article on this subject, which notes that: “The Japanese crisis of the […]

Lesson from Japan

Japan went through its “bubble years” in the 1980’s, with the Nikkei index peaking at 39000 (versus 8664 today). The blog well remembers standing in front of Tokyo’s Imperial Palace in Tokyo in 1988, when its land was said to be worth more than all of California. Since then, housing and stock market bubbles have […]

High inflation, or global downturn?

Central bankers had it easy over the past decade. Now they are going to have to earn their money. Inflation is rising rapidly, and growth rates are falling. But unfortunately, as I first noted back in March, they still seem to have differing ideas about what policies will best counter these twin challenges.

Subprime: a many-headed Hydra

Yesterday, the ECB (European Central Bank) provided an unprecedented €95bn into the region’s credit markets, to maintain liquidity. Otherwise, firms would have had problems paying their bills, and employees might not have been paid their wages. This is serious stuff, and it was followed by the US Fed providing $24bn into US markets, and the […]

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