Karl Marx, The Miner’s Strike, Margaret Thatcher, Thatcherism, capitalism, financial meltdown
Asian Chemical Connections
Japan’s corporate hero
manga, Japanese conformism, losing face, Lost Decade
History will surely repeat itself
The mood at the recent NPRA International Petrochemical Conference in San Antonio, Texas, was mixed, despite all the economic gloom. Some producers said they were still making money – especially those selling into manufacturing sectors benefiting from a rise in exports due to the weak dollar. What’s certain, of course, though is that things will […]
Here we go again – 1997 is back…..
I sincerely hope not, but all the signs are there because of: *A financial crisis which nobody again saw coming, this time with global implications *What could prove to be too much spending on new equipment and capacity. This time high equity prices have paid for these investments rather than US dollar-denominated bank loans, as […]
Japanese gloom builds as earnings fall
Yet more gloom – the world’s second-biggest economy appears to be slowing down as the effects of the sub-prime crisis spread. What will this mean for Japan’s chemical industry, which in the first half of the current financial year suffered badly from the highly cylical electronic chemicals sector? All will, of course, hinge on the […]
Could China be the new Japan?
Quite possibly not, according to a Deutsche Bank report. However, as the report makes the clear, the same types of imbalances are building in the Chinese economy which led to Japan’s “Lost Decade” of the 1990s. Time to take stock and have a contingency plan?
Is the world heading for a naphtha crisis?
Quite possiby says International e-Chem and Wood Mackenzie in a new study which predicts that by 2015, China could have a deficit of as much as 35m tonnes. When you consider that total global output is around 300m tonne/year, this is quite staggering. On paper, China should be balanced on naphtha because of a huge […]
The Middle East may set polyolefins pricing
This was the warning from Bob Bauman of Nexant ChemSystems at last week’s 25th Annual Petrochemical Conference in Houston, Texas. Read below for some rather gloomy predictions of where markets could be heading in 2011-12
Will Japan’s rate rise do any good?
The Bank of Japan has decided to raise interest rates – from 0.25 to 0.5%. This could weaken the yen, thereby damaging the country’s export-led recovery. For the petrochemical players, the benefits of a 21-year low yen have been offset by the increased cost of importing naphtha. The bank is also banking on last summer’s […]
Japan is still in search of a consumer recovery
Japan’s fourth quarter GPD growth of 4.8%, which was released today, exceeded economists’ expectations. However, although consumer spending rose by 1.1% on an annualised basis, this merely compensated for the 1.1% decline in Q3. In addition, wages rose by only 0.2% last year, barely up from a decade-long decline. Companies are preferring to pay down […]
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