By John Richardson YOU might well have forgotten the Turkish lira crisis because of the US/China trade war. But Turkey is crucial for the health of the global polyolefins business because of the size of its imports. Before the US fell out with Turkey, resulting in the collapse of the lira, we had expected that […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Turkey Crisis: Implications For Polyolefins And Global Economy
By John Richardson THE first ramification of the Turkey crisis is that the collapse of the lira raises questions over how Turkish importers will be able to afford the dollars to pay for some of the polyolefins imported since the crisis began. Then comes the issue of what happens to Turkish polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene […]
The Three Essential Oil Price, Economic Growth Scenarios For Petchems
By John Richardson ALL the excitement over the positive impact of US tax cuts should be placed very firmly in this context from an early July Reuters article: US budget analysts generally look at the impact of tax changes over a ten-year period. The tax cuts approved at the end of 2017 were estimated to […]
Quantitative Easing Just Doesn’t Work
By John Richardson AT long last! Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), said in a speech to the IMF last week: We have to be mindful that too prolonged a period of very low real rates can have undesirable consequences in the context of ageing societies, where many households save not just […]
China’s Long, Hard Struggle To Reform Local Govt Financing
By John Richardson A story that moves financial markets doesn’t have to be true. All that matters is that the narrative convinces enough people for a sufficient period of time to move markets either up or down, thus allowing speculators to make money. And these days, because of high-frequency computer-driven trading, the credibility of any […]
China Pulls Back From Funding Other Emerging Markets
By John Richardson IT important to be relentlessly realistic about the risks no confronting emerging markets in general, now that China is focusing much more on its own internal problems and needs. One of these risks – reduced funding of infrastructure and other projects in the emerging world by Chinese banks – was highlighted in this […]
What Yuan Depreciation Means
By John Richardson THE truth is that nobody has ever entirely understood the nature of China’s chemicals and polymers demand. During the good times, at the height of China’s credit Ponzi scheme, if you were a sales manager, why ask too many questions? Sales were sales and if mono-ethylene glycol (MEG) ended up stuck in […]
China And The Fed: Still Back To Front
By John Richardson THEY are still getting it the wrong way round. Both the Financial Times and The Economist, have said over the last few days that weaker prospects for emerging markets are mainly the result of Fed tapering. We continue to think that this might be partly because of the great “unknown, unknown” that […]
China: Sweat The Lending Data
By John Richardson AS business slowly gets back to normal following the Lunar New Year, everyone will be scrabbling around for indications about whether the January downturn in China was just a short-term blip, or something more significant. Confidence that things are back to normal might be taken from this Forbes article, which quotes […]
Global Equities, China, The Fed And Some Perspective
By John Richardson AS USUAL, everyone will take what they want and need to take, in order to protect their own interests, out of Monday – the worst day for the Dow Jones Industrial Average in seven months. This was followed by severe declines in several emerging market indices. Like everyone else in the somewhat […]
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