By John Richardson JUST as the West was lucky, so was China. The Chinese economy was also buoyed by the Babyboomers, and by its 2001 admission to the World Trade Organisation that enabled it to greatly increase its role...
Credit: Odysseas Gp Creative Commons BY NC SA By John Richardson WHEN the Fed launched its third round of quantitative easing (QE3), a Perth Australia-based investment analyst said: "I get the feeling that people are waking up to...
European LDPE spot prices at their lowest level since January 2010 By John Richardson THE EU Summit results might have bought a little more time, but as John Authers points out in this article in the Financial Times,...
By John Richardson Wen Jiabao re-emphasised at the weekend that China's economic policy would be tweaked rather than radically overhauled because inflation, despite declining further in April, remains a major threat. Anybody hoping for a stimulus package on the...
By John Richardson Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali al-Naimi on Tuesday did his best to calm the oil markets by arguing that the kingdom had met all its customers' requests for crude, and was ready to raise output to full...
By John Richardson THE blog has sought to add to the debate during the four years it has been operating by thinking around the big macro-economic issues, and constantly keeping in touch with our market contacts at "ground level" in...
By John Richardson JOURNALISTS are often accused of exaggeration for the sake a good story, but it is genuinely no exaggeration to say that markets are in free-fall. Last week we reported on how European polyolefin pricing was on a...
By John Richardson ANYONE clinging on to the hope that the weakness in the global polyolefin market is merely down to China going through a prolonged period of destocking could face a rude awakening. China's polyethylene (PE) demand was...
By John Richardson THE dreadful state of European polyolefin markets became even more evident late last week as prices continued their declines. Discussions on further reductions in European olefin contract prices were also set to begin today. High density polyethylene...
By John Richardson CHEMICALS and polymer demand looks even less likely to be supported by "buying forward" following yesterday's decision by the International Energy Agency (IEA) to release 60m barrels of crude into the market. Here is a bit...
By John Richardson THE majority of financial analysts seem to be clinging on to the hope that the recovery in petrochemicals demand from China is about to happen. This doesn't just apply to our industry. Analysts across many sectors...
By John Richardson WEAKER domestic consumption-growth in China represents a major challenge to the argument that global petrochemicals demand, and therefore pricing, will see a strong recovery during 2011. Price declines continued last week with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) down...
By John Richardson The start of the next dip in what this blog has long thought would be a double-dip economic crisis looks as if it could have begun. If not now, it's going to happen at some point because...
"Hello everybody - welcome to the island of Sodor. Time to flip your positions' Source of picture: www.dragoart.com By John Richardson MY three-year-old son has, quite rightly, an incredibly short attention span. A child of that age should be overwhelmed...
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