By John Richardson IT IS just plain intellectually lazy, and, more importantly, very wrong indeed: You work for a petrochemicals company and have been asked by your boss to come up with a demand-growth estimate for the next ten years for the rest of the developing world, and so you look at what’s happened in […]
Asian Chemical Connections
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 […]
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 […]
IMF New Study Highlights Critical Role Of Demographics
By John Richardson IT is fantastic news that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has highlighted ageing populations as a major drag on global growth in its latest World Economic Outlook update. The IMF warns that employment growth will decline in both advanced and emerging economies compared to the rates seen before the global financial crisis. […]
Where Have All The Jobs Gone?
By John Richardson POLITICIANS everywhere know that their chances of staying in office depend on how many jobs they can at the very least prevent from disappearing down the economic plughole. Ideally, they also want to be able to lay credible claims that their “long term vision” has created lots of new employment across the […]
Australia: This Is No Way To Run A Country
By John Richardson TONY Abbott has survived an attempt to remove him as Australia’s Prime Minister. Do you really think this will bring to an end the political instability that has resulted in four changes in PM since 2007? This really is a rhetorical question because anybody who lives and works in Australia, as I do, […]
Europe Needs A New “Marshall Plan”
By John Richardson IT isn’t working. Surely, Europe’s policymakers must realise this? The trouble is that I worry they still don’t get it, otherwise there would not be plans to print more money in Europe. Resorting to extra quantitative easing isn’t going to rescue Europe’s “lost generation”. More of the wrong kind of European economic […]
Europe’s Policy Vacuum Means You Have To Write Off 2015
By John Richardson EUROPE is going nowhere and, so like China, can only be a drag on global growth in 2015 as we enter a new global financial crisis. “The legacy of the crisis is affecting [EU] member states to different degrees but spill overs through trade and confidence are large,” said the European Commission […]
Japan: “I Really Don’t Know How We Go Forward”
By John Richardson THERE is no debate. Everyone agrees that Japan simply must overcome its demographic challenges. Here are a few sobering facts which indicate the scale of these challenges: Should current trends continue, Japan’s population will have fallen to 87 million from its current size of 127 million by 2060, according to this article […]
South Korea: No Room For Complacency
By John Richardson I have long loved South Korea, ever since I first visited the country back in the late 1990s. The sheer guts, determination and get-up-and-go of South Koreans have to be admired, especially when you put this into the context of the almost total devastation inflicted by the Korean War. And South Korea continues […]
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