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Chemicals and the Economy

Morgan Stanley says commodity supercycle a myth

Morgan Stanley’s head of emerging markets seems to share the blog’s belief that the current oil and commodity ‘supercycle’ is simply a speculative frenzy. Writing in the Financial Times, Ruchir Sharma notes: “The daily news about falling oil prices is the beginning of a major shift in the global economy: the end of the “commodity […]

Iran adds floating oil storage, contango weakens

Iran has begun storing crude oil offshore again, according to Bloomberg, as demand in its major market, Japan, enters a seasonal slowdown. It has 6mbd on ships in the Persian Gulf (equal to 19% of current storage for the WTI contract at Cushing in the USA). Another 2 ships also seem to be being used […]

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble

Its not only the blog (and fellow blogger John Richardson), who worry about the speculative frenzy underway in China, and its impact on global polymer and chemical markets. Wu Xiaoling, former deputy governor of the central bank, has called the growth in new lending “excessive“, and warned it is creating “bubbles in the property and […]

Ineos appoint Morgan Stanley for Grangemouth

The blog’s close eye on Scotland’s media has again been rewarded this morning, as ‘The Scotsman’ reveals that Ineos have appointed Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, to advise on the sale of Grangemouth. It suggests that a company such as “PetroChina could buy the refinery, while Ineos would retain the polymer and petro-chemical processing plants […]

And then there were none

20 years of investment banking as an independent activity came to an end on Wall Street last night. Bear Stearns was the first to go in March, rescued by JPMorgan. Last week Lehman failed, and Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America. Now the two remaining survivors, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, have thrown […]

China faces ‘economic restructuring’

A year ago, it was fashionable to claim that the Asian economies had ‘decoupled’ from the West. Any slowdown would simply pass them by. Last December, I noted a rare dissenting voice, Stephen Roach of Morgan Stanley, who commented that ‘decoupling is a good story, but its not going to work going forward’. In March, […]

Asia ‘Recouples’

The major investment banks have changed their minds about the potential for Asia to ‘decouple’ from any credit-crunch induced downturn in the West. Originally, they had believed that domestic demand in China and elsewhere would enable the Asian economy to sail ahead, no matter what happened elsewhere. I was a bit sceptical of this hypothesis, […]

Oil prices and the euro

The US dollar has been falling steadily in recent weeks. It is particularly weak against the euro, having fallen almost 5% since January. OPEC countries buy much more from the eurozone than from the US, and the OPEC President has said they are ‘concerned’ about dollar weakness. We probably need to start monitoring oil prices […]

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