By John Richardson JUST four months after the blog first moved to Asia, we got the shock of our lives: The Asian Financial Crisis. We were bewildered and didn’t know what to think, but fortunately, perhaps, there wasn’t much of an Internet in those days. So we had smaller mountains of news and analysis to […]
Asian Chemical Connections
China’s September “Export Boom”. Are You Serious?
By John Richardson WHEN something seems to be so obviously too good to be true, based on lots of contrary evidence, then it usually is. And so here’s the thing: Nobody should take any serious notice of the 15.3% year-on-year rise in September’s exports because all the evidence points to something being very wrong with […]
China: The Future Winners And Losers
By John Richardson CONVENTIONAL analysis, which assumes that the world of the last six years will be the world of the next six years, is failing. One of the most obvious examples of this is China, where one-dimensional, lack-of-depth conventional thinking still maintains that the rise of the country’s “middle classes” will result in a […]
Want Oil Prices Back At Above $1OO? Be Careful What You Wish For
By John Richardson WE worry that quite a few people still don’t get it on crude oil. Here is why: As recently as July, as the chart above from the latest BP Energy Review shows, oil prices were from 2009 until July of last year were close to costing 5% of global GDP. At this […]
As Easy Money Ends, Time To Unblock The Plughole
By John Richardson YOU cannot fix a blocked plughole by pouring in more water. This is the core message of this very important FT Alphaville blog post, which tells us that: While Western central banks have done their best to stimulate new credit creation, a lack of good-enough returns from the real economy means that […]
Oil Prices at $50 or $150 In 2015? Take Your Pick
By John Richardson REAL price discovery is finally returning to oil markets after years of incredibly harmful central bank stimulus which put the market largely in the hands of the speculators. But now actual supply of and demand for oil suddenly matter again as central bank stimulus is withdrawn in the US and in China. […]
China Announces “The End Of GDP Growth Supremacy”
By John Richardson THE views of the small number of men who run China – i.e. the country’s Politburo – have long been viewed as the best possible guide to where the country is heading. Chemicals manufacturers were right to build lots of capacity both in China, and overseas, in response to the headline message […]
China’s Bogus Export Boom
By John Richardson CHINA’S strong export growth in July and August is widely viewed as fantastic compensation for weaker growth at home. It also viewed as a sign that the global economy has perhaps, turned a corner, But now it looks as if a substantial proportion of this export boom was, in fact, bogus. Here […]
Oil Markets: The Failure Of Accepted Wisdom
By John Richardson THE illusion of a strong global economy has been created by central bank stimulus – via the Fed and, much more importantly, via China. And the illusion of a strong global economy was accompanied by the “illusion of scarcity” in crude oil, when, in fact, inventories have been high for years as […]
China: A Deliberate “Snowball Effect”
By John Richardson EARLIER this week we answered this question – “How bad will it get in China before it gets good?” – in this blog post and a follow-up post that looked at some the immense, long-term uncertainties. Now it is the turn of the other two questions, posed by a senior chemicals industry […]
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