By John Richardson THE blog held a full day of discussions with our ICIS China price reporting team in Shanghai (we will provide a lot more details next week) and the story was consistent: *Government policy to rein-in liquidity, most...
By John Richardson CHINA is facing a financial crisis that could put US sub-prime into the shade. "Between 2007 and 2012, the ratio of credit to GDP climbed to more than 190%, an increase of 60 percentage points," said US...
The course of true love never runs smooth.....Happy China couples get divorced and then plan to remarry in order to avoid new property tax Source of picture: Quirky China News/Rex Features By John Richardson China will see "large inflation pressure in...
........ Source: FT Beyondbrics By John Richardson A fascinating article by the academic Anil K Gupta and consultant Haiyan Wang offers further support to our long-running argument that the future will not necessarily be the same as the future,...
Source of graph: http://www.businessspectator.com.au/ By John Richardson "Candide, the classic novel of the great French writer Voltaire, is a satirical description of a young man who has been taught that 'everything is for the best in the best...
By John Richardson POLYMER markets continue to tell us that China's 2009-2010 economic stimulus programme delivered unsustainable demand growth. China's demand for polyvinyl chloride (PVC) surged from 10.9m tonnes in 2009 to 13.2m tonnes in 2010, according to Global...
In the last of our series of blog posts on some of the major challenges facing China's economy over the next 12-18 months, we look at politics. By John Richardson THE outcome of the battle over China's economic...
The second of our series of blog posts on China's economic challenges over the next 12-18 months focuses on deflation. By John Richardson DEFLATION has now become a major concern for the Chinese economy following the release of official...
In the first of a series of blog posts on the major challenges facing China's economy over the next 12-18 months, we look at bad debts. High stakes in Hangzhou. Source of picture: Wikimedia By John Richardson A...
Ben Bernanke. Source of picture: Wikipedia By John Richardson OUR next three blog posts will examine some of the threats to a recovery in China's chemicals and polymer demand growth over the next 12-18 months. We will look...
By John Richardson IT is the demand for loans that matters in China these days more than their supply, as chemicals markets have been telling us for over a month now. And now, statistical back-up for our anecdotal evidence, that...
By John Richardson POLYOLEFIN markets are not going to bottom out until August-September at the earliest, according to several producers and traders who the blog spoke to yesterday. And even if prices do eventually stop declining, confidence has all but...
By John Richardson In the second of a series of three blog posts, we gauge the reaction of the market to last week's sharp decline in polyolefin prices. Yesterday, we focused on the Middle East. Today, we interview a source...
By John RichardsonECONOMISTS think China's growth has bottomed out, thanks to unexpectedly strong March bank lending. They also think that interest rates will stay low for a long time, even if rates cannot be cut because of the inflation problem. New...
By John Richardson MUCH excitement heralded the announcement that February inflation in China had fallen to a 20-month low of 3.2 percent - well within the government's annualised target of 4 percent. This led to the belief that the government would...
By John Richardson IT seems inevitable that petrochemical markets will respond positively to the Chinese government's decision to reduce bank-reserve requirements by 50 basis points. There will quite likely be a relief rally in the Dalian Commodity Exchange's futures contract...
Him again.....Jim Chanos Source of picture. www.marketfolly.com By John Richardson THE Chinese government is playing a perilous game at the moment as it tries to undo damage caused by economic stimulus. As it grapples with attempting to lower property...
By John Richardson CHINA'S economy would only expand by 5% in H2 of this year and in the first half of 2012 on an annualised basis, said Diana Choyleva, a Hong Kong-based economist for Lombard Street Research. This was the result of credit tightening as...
By John Richardson THE odd chemicals trader who has gone long might well seek to talk-up his or her markets by claiming that the slowdown in China's inflation rate is great news. But nobody interested in anything beyond the sale of...
By John Richardson IT was interesting to read late last week about how certain chemicals analysts still believe that the big slump in the sector's share prices might merely be a rough patch, possibly just a correction. In this same excellent...
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