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Would you pass the Koala Bear test?

I've just returned from a wonderful few days in Perth, Western Australia, where the motorists don't as a rule try to kill you (unlike in most of Asia) and if you are a tourist at least, you can come away with the false impression that the cork-hatted people have got the balance between work and...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 10-08-2008
The big challenges

As delegates gather for this year's European Petrochemical Association meeting in the unreal world of Monaco (unrealf or 99.9 per cent recurring of us), I thought it was worth summarising some of the issues discussed on this blog over the last few months. We've dealt with: *Oil-price volatility...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-27-2008
History will repeat itself

It is September 2025 and the financial system has imploded due to the collapse in value of collaterised green obligations (CGOs). So how did we end up in this sorry state? Here is a guide to how the crisis developed: Governments (often sovereign wealth funds that had made a fortune from selling oil and...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-17-2008
The world is round after all

I asked my boss two years ago what were his favourite business books. His list included The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the 21st Century by Thomas Friedman. Of course I rushed out and bought the book. It has sold by the truck load and was quoted by Mohamed Al-Mady of SABIC during his speech at...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-16-2008
Go on, stick your head in deeper

Apparently it's a fallacy - ostriches don't stick their heads in the sand. Investment bankers frequently do, though, especially all the greedy ones who only cared about their end-of-year bonuses when they new perfectly well that the credit crisis was on its way. I am sitting here sipping a beer...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-15-2008
Drilling to save the environment

Here is another interesting economic analysis (with a little facts and numbers for those who like hard data) from the New York Times on US offshore drilling . According to Robert Hahn, director of the Reg-Markets Center at the American Enterprise Institute, and Peter Passell, senior fellow at the Milken...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-15-2008
A drowning man will clutch onto anything

A drowning man will grab hold of any floating debris - even a plastic bag made from standard-grade Chinese polyethylene (PE). Hence, last Friday a statement by Wang Tianpu led to a few days of excited speculation about the cancellation of several Chinese cracker projects . The president of Sinopec Corp...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-12-2008
Uncle Sam back from the dead?

A very interesting report by McKinsey (you can sign up free for their online newsletter which only takes a minute) expands on the theme of reverse globalisation which I talked about last week. The cost of shipping a standard 40-foot container has tripled since 2000 and labour cost increases have risen...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-10-2008
Yes, I know - I was wrong!

Anybody who has had the misfortune to have to listen to me ranting on about Peak Oil of late might have heard - if they managed to stay awake long enough - that I predicted crude could not fall below $100 a barrel because of the fundamentals. I must admit my first reaction when I heard on the radio this...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-10-2008
The ultimate consumption tax

In what could be the world's first fat tax, the State Employees' Insurance Board of Alabama is to charge extra insurance premiums for employees with a body mass index over 35 from 2010. The southern state enjoys the dubious status of being the most obese in the whole of the US, just pipping Mississippi...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-09-2008

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