John Cusack, Kate Beckinsale, antidumping petitions, trade protection, living in cloud cuckoo land
Asian Chemical Connections
If I had a dollar for every time………
…….I had heard a company saying it was moving up the value chain (or rather a Euro or a British pound these days), I wouldn’t be writing this blog entry while smelling the wonderful aroma of pork sausages being cooked for my tea. Brown sauce and mash as well, of course. Can Dow Chemical make […]
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 […]
More talk of credit tightening in China
Call me a bitter old cynic, but some of the talk in this ICIS news article about a government lending crackdown might be from a few traders taking positions. But still, it does seem as if the government is taking some measures to restrict loan growth. Earlier, it appeared unclear as to whether the restrictions […]
Asia needs a recesssion
Asian industry leaders are playing lip service to the environmental crisis the world confronts . George Monbiot, the excellent author and journalist, argues that what the West needs is a recession to give the planet a breather.Asia also needs a substantial economic slowdown to give policymakers and technology developers more time.
Can polymers rescue the Mile High Club?
Maybe Singapore airlines has got the wrong end of the stick by trying to ban first class passengers in their new cabins in the sky from indulging in a little hanky panky. Perhaps the answer is to equip the walls of these private cabins with super sound-absorbing polymers (polyurethanes, maybe?). Any suggestions from polymer experts […]
Is the elephant about to fall off the bike?
As Paul Hodges notes in his Chemicals and the Economy blog https://www.icis.com/blogs/chemicals%2Dand%2Dthe%2Deconomy/, China’s Finance Minister quit this morning – either over his role in a sex scandal or because inflation and the stock markets are out of control. Petrochemical demand growth has been booming in China because, as a bureaucrat put it shortly after WTO […]
The global credit crisis is going to last
The collective sigh of relief was almost audible late last week when the Fed cut its discount rate – the rate banks charge each other for lending. Action from other central banks, including the European Central Bank, could follow this week. Analysts also rate the likelihood of the Fed cutting its formal interest rate at […]
China’s crackers are on track. Is this bad news?
The consultants, traders and producers I spoke to last week insist that the current wave of new Chinese ethylene capacity due on stream in the current Five-Year Plan (2006-10), Download file is more or less on track to be completed on schedule. Also see on these slides the ICIS insight Asia list of crackers after […]
Capacity build-up to force volumes west…even from Asia?
There’s been a lot of talk about the next wave of Middle East capacity being too great for Asia to absorb all the Asian volumes. Indeed, estimates abound over western growth being satisfied by the M-E over the next 3-5 years. But here’s a thought: what if China’s capacity build-up leads producers elsewhere in Asia […]
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