By John Richardson BEFORE you get carried away with the wholly misguided notion that we have entered into a “new normal” of oil prices in the region of $60-80 a barrel for the rest of this year, see below for a further and updated guide to why this kind of thinking is very, very dangerous. […]
Asian Chemical Connections
US Fed Reinvents 19th Century Boom And Boost Oil Markets
By John Richardson ONE way of looking at the world is that central bankers know exactly what they are doing as they are Masters of the Universe. These bankers have excellent degrees and doctorates from top universities bursting out their CVs, along with fantastic track records of rescuing the global economy, I have often been […]
China’s Latest Interest Rate Cut: The Essential Context
By John Richardson CHINA lowered interest rates for the third time in six months on Sunday in a further attempt to limit the damage caused by economic reforms. The two earlier rate cuts, and February’s reduction in the bank reserve-requirement ratio, were also about limiting the pain resulting from the boldest, most risky set of economic […]
Why The New Belief In Oil-Price Stability Is Wrong
By John Richardson THE new consensus view on oil prices, based on my discussions with many delegate on the side lines of this year’s Asia Petrochemical Industry Conference (APIC) in Seoul, South Korea, seems to run roughly as follows: OK, most of us completely missed the H2 2014 collapse of crude, but never mind, we now […]
China And The Lewis Turning Point: It Is Here
By John Richardson FOR the last four years, my fellow blogger Paul Hodges and I have been consistently arguing that China was about to hit the Lewis Turning Point. This is the point at which any country runs out of surplus migrant labour, after enjoying a manufacturing-led boom resulting from the movement of lots of […]
How 3D Printing Means No Repeat Of China’s Growth Story
By John Richardson AS you can see from the above chart, China’s percentage share of the global polypropylene (PP) market has risen from 15% of consumption in 2000 to 33% in 2014. During the same period, however, India’s share of worldwide consumption only rose from 7% to 9%. This kind of chart is used as […]
China To Stop Importing Chemicals As It Exports New Technologies
By John Richardson LAST Friday I discussed how, even without the impact of demographics on demand, it is mathematically impossible to fit one two billion into two billion. Now bear with me for a few minutes. The themes I discussed on Friday are so critically important to how the global chemicals industry measures growth that […]
Ageing Populations And Fitting Two Billion Into One Billion
By John Richardson THE above chart is of absolutely critical importance for anybody who is serious about estimating both the strength and nature of future global demand growth for chemicals. If you are not a serious analysts then, sure, ignore demographics and cling on to a few vacuous slogans such as the “rise of the […]
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