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'Demand and prices in free fall'

The moment the blog has long feared, and warned about , may be about to arrive. It appears that we may be about to revisit 1980, when for some weeks it seemed that demand for many petchem products had simply stopped. As Nigel Davis notes in an excellent ICIS insight article , we are not there yet. But...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 10-07-2008
Blue skies disappear

A year ago, the blog was in a minority of one, with its forecast for 2008. Its heading was ' Budgeting for a Downturn' . By contrast, the consensus post-EPCA was for $70bbl oil, debt market problems to be contained, and for chemical margins to remain at 2007 levels. This year's EPCA mood...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 10-05-2008
The global stock market decline

Alan Greenspan's comments ( below ), led the blog to investigate how the world's major stock markets had moved since their recent peaks. All, as shown in the chart, are now in bear markets. Stock markets often forecast economic developments 6 - 12 months ahead, and so this represents a negative...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-18-2008
'A very, very serious global economic slowdown'

A trend seems to be developing amongst the world's policy makers. Last month saw China and the UK's finance ministries warning of bad times to come. Yesterday, France's finance minister joined the chorus, saying that she had 'underestimated the spillover from the US financial and housing...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 09-02-2008
The 'difficult task of damage control'

The central bankers' bank (the Bank for International Settlements) is not very impressed with its members' efforts over the past year. Readers may remember that its Report last year explicitly warned of the problems that were about to occur in world financial markets. This year's Report expresses...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 07-08-2008
The blog's first birthday

Its now a year since the blog started. Since then, 213 postings have appeared. It is now read in 72 countries and 620 cities (shown above). Most encouragingly, readership continues to steadily increase. Since January, it has risen a further 301%. The blog's aim is to identify 'the influences...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 07-05-2008
Chemicals feel the wind of change

Three major themes ( ICIS Jun08.pdf ) emerged from our Asian Conference last week, co-organised with ICIS: • Change. The world is clearly changing very rapidly. Feedstock prices are rising. At the same time, major new capacity is starting to come on-stream in the Middle East, and in Asia. • Complexity...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 06-30-2008
Dow raises prices by up to 20%

Dow today announced that it is raising prices for 'all of its products by up to 20 percent - depending on their exposure to rising energy, feedstock and transportation costs - and will review all terms to all customers'. Dow CEO, Andrew Liveris, said that Dow's 'first quarter feedstock...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 05-28-2008
OPEC suggests $200/bbl oil

OPEC used to believe that its fortunes were tied to the health of the global economy. But as I noted last month , its current policy is more reminiscent of ‘the difficult times of 1973/4 and 1989.80’. The evidence for this statement is mounting. Saudi Oil Minister, Ali Naimi, said recently that the Kingdom...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 04-30-2008
Interesting analysis of credit crunch causes

I thought the following Executive Summary of the causes of the credit crisis was hard to beat: 'Investment banks leapt into commercial banking without the deposit base, while commercial banks went into investment banking without knowing risk management, and this is where we end up,'' said...

Posted to ICIS Blogs (Weblog) by Anonymous on 04-28-2008

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