Entries from Chemicals & The Economy tagged with 'US recession'
US chemicals barometer signals slowing economy
The blog's latest post for the Financial Times' 'FT Data blog' has just been published. It highlights the ACC's new Chemicals Activity Barometer. By guest contributor Paul Hodges I suggested in an earlier post that chemical prices were an excellent...
Revisions, revisions
Statisticians love re-writing economic history. And a notable example of this has occurred today. US government statisticians reported that the US economy actually declined by 0.2% at the end of last year. Whereas, 6 months ago, they reported it as...
Leading indicators signal chemicals slowdown
The latest leading indicators from the OECD (shown in red above) are now diverging quite strongly from actual Industrial Production performance (shown in blue). The chart is taken for the latest American Chemistry Council (ACC) weekly report, and the...
Anecdotal evidence
The blog usually focuses on news items and analysis. But just occasionally, anecdotal evidence seems worth reporting. My colleague, John Keeley, is well known to many readers from his days at Shell Chemicals, as well as more recently with IeC....
Buffett says US is in recession
‘If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then its a duck’. This simple logic probably best sums up Warren Buffett’s position on the current state of the US economy. ‘By any commonsense definition’, said Buffett yesterday,...
A dip or a downturn?
Are we seeing just a dip in economic growth? Or are we at the start of a downturn that may run for months, or even years? The answer to this question lies in the US, which still accounts for 25%...
3 key questions for any Board
What are the key questions that need to be asked when discussing any budget or strategy proposal? I have just found the answer, from a master in the field. Sir Maurice Hodgson is recognised as one of the greatest ICI...
Budgeting for a downturn
The ‘consensus forecast’ for 2008 is very optimistic, as I commented in my post-EPCA note. It says oil will remain at $70/bbl, that debt market problems will be contained, and that petchem margins will remain at 2007 levels. This is...
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