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Asian Chemical Connections

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 […]

Thailand’s Coup: The Economic Suspension Has Gone

By John Richardson WE are  going to feel every political, social and economic bump in the road from now on because the suspension on the proverbial automobile has gone. No longer can Asian economies compensate for their domestic problems in the way they did during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, which was largely through raising […]

The US Patient Needs An Operation

By John Richardson THE Fed’s quantitative easing (QE) programme hasn’t worked because, to use an analogy, it has been equivalent to pumping drugs into a patient that needs major surgery in order to fully recover. A steady flow of drugs creates the illusion that the patient is fine, but once the drug supply is reduced […]

3D Printing Likely To Change Just About Everything

By John Richardson 3D printing will very probably force manufacturers, including those who make chemicals and polymers, to build entirely new business models. Here is why: The young in Western societies will be poorer because of less aggregate demand as a result of the retirement of the Babyboomers. They will need to save a lot […]

No “Breakthrough Year” For The US In 2014

By John Richardson PEOPLE who trade in oil, other commodities and equities don’t buy that many chemicals and polymers because, of course, relative to the US population as a whole, they number very few. Thus, the challenge for 2014, as President Obama talks about a “breakthrough year” for the US economy, is spreading the strength […]

The US Growth Conundrum

By John Richardson WHERE is the growth in the US economy going to come from to consume the big increase in the country’s ethylene and derivatives production due to take place from 2017 onwards? This is a question that continues to trouble the blog when we study charts such as the one above. It is […]

Chemicals Companies Risk Losing Market Muscle

By John Richardson IT used to be so easy. All you had to do was build a feedstock-advantage plant outside China and/or build a plant in China and demand would take care of itself. The reason was that China was on a roll from 2001 onwards thanks to its accession to the World Trade Organisation, […]

Generic Strategies No Longer Good Enough

By John Richardson DURING the economic Supercycle life was easy for chemicals companies. Strong and constant demand growth was assured and so all they had to do was focus on building new, cost-effective capacity. Top-down strategy was generic – a one-size-fits-all approach. Even if chemicals companies got the timing of new capacities slightly wrong it […]

Death By A Thousand Cuts

By John Richardson COST cutting and disciplined operating rates have been two of the factors that have helped maintain European cracker and polyethylene (PE) profitability at pretty healthy levels since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008. So too has the European cluster concept, where producers can share ethylene via pipelines and where […]

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