By John Richardson HISTORIANS will end up concluding that falling emerging market currencies and stock markets – the prelude to what could be a full-blown crisis – is really about China and not about the US Federal Reserve. The Fed is just a sideshow to the main event of what is going to drive not […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Getting China And The Fed The Wrong Way Round
By John Richardson MOST newspapers and wire services still seem to have got it in the wrong way round. Last week, as Argentina’s Peso crisis began, they continued to identify Fed tapering as the number one threat to emerging markets followed by China. But here’s a reminder: The Fed has spent some $3 trillion on […]
Thailand: Papering Over the Cracks May Be Harder
By John Richardson THE longer that the political crisis in Thailand drags on, the more we worry that economic growth will be badly affected. Tourism, for example, is around 10% of the country’s GDP and the Tourism Authority of Thailand estimates that hotel occupancy rates in Bangkok are down to just 30-40%. Nearly $4 billion […]
Gas, Gas, And Perhaps Even More Gas
By John Richardson THE global petrochemicals industry is stepping on the gas as it accelerates both capacity expansions and the restructuring of existing assets. Apologies for the pun. In the US, of course, some 25m tonnes/year of ethylene capacity is due to be added, most of it after 2017, thanks to big volumes of cheap […]
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