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Chemicals and the Economy

G-20 in self-congratulatory mood

When the G-20 met last April, it issued a Communiqué containing just 688 words. Its Pittsburgh meeting over the weekend produced a Leader’s Statement containing 9292 words. “More” does generally not mean “better” when it comes to writing action plans. Instead, the document simply seems to be a catch-all of comments from the 20 leaders. […]

Knowing what we don’t know

At a time of uncertainty, its sometimes helpful just to frame the questions that need to be answered about the future. Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund managers, have done just this in two separate analyses. Their answers mirror those advanced by former Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, and make good sense to the blog: Q1. […]

The ‘Minsky moment’ unfolds

Pimco, the world’s largest bond fund, have repeated their belief that we are facing a ‘Minsky moment’, named after Hyman Minsky (pictured). His insight was that a long period of stability, such as that experienced over the past decade, eventually leads to major instability. This is because investors forget that higher reward equals higher risk. […]

‘The price of all assets will go down’

‘Deleveraging’ is an ugly word, and it has ugly implications. Bill Gross of Pimco, who manages the world’s largest bond fund, has done us all a favour by trying to explain its impact, and why it is likely to continue for some time to come. He notes that all financial institutions are now reducing the […]

Global inflation on the rise

Pimco, the world’s largest bond investors, are worried about rising inflation. Their main concern is that many Asian and Middle Eastern countries had ‘anchored’ their currency to the US$. ‘With that anchor gone’, they comment, ‘due to the US Federal Reserve’s focus on preventing the US financial system from falling into a depression-style downward spiral, […]

Current account deficits start to matter

The US Fed’s decision to keep cutting interest rates is causing a major change in Asian investment behaviour. This will slow world economic growth quite significantly, and is bad news for chemical industry sales. It also means that the informal Bretton Woods II system of currency management has broken down.

Interesting Quotes (2)

Credit market problems intensified last week, even though stock markets rallied strongly until Wednesday. I thought you might like to see some more comments on what is going on, from people close to the action. ‘Trust was shaken today (Wednesday). Credit depends on trust. If trust disappears, then credit disappears, and you have a systemic […]

Greed and Fear

Bill Gross runs PIMCO, the world’s largest government bond managers with assets of nearly $700bn. In a new commentary, he pulls no punches about what he sees as the ‘gluttony’ of the super-rich amongst the private equity and hedge fund elite. He also takes aim at the lenders who, in his view, have been ‘too […]

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