The world enjoyed an economic SuperCycle between 1982-2007. Its largest economy, the USA, suffered just 16 months of recession during the whole 25 years. As a result, social and political issues took a back-seat. Politicians instead competed to occupy the middle ground. Former UK premier Margaret Thatcher’s phrase ‘you can’t buck the markets’, became received […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Alaska’s lessons for European air traffic control
Somewhere at the back of the blog’s mind is the memory of a major 1980 eruption by Mt St Helens in Washington State, NW USA. According to the Wall Street Journal, the lessons learnt by Alaska Airlines from this eruption could have avoided the closure of Europe’s airspace last week, if they had been picked […]
Travel tips
Business travel occupies a lot of time for many people in the chemical industry. So I thought I might pass on details of 2 websites that I find particularly useful when travelling: • www.skyscanner.net does a very job of comparison shopping on airline fares. • www.weatheronline.co.uk provides excellent local weather forecasts around the world. Please […]
Airlines and the chemical industry
There are some close parallels between the airline and chemical industries. Both are very capital intensive, use oil as a key raw material, and are heavily dependent on operating rates as a driver of profitability. Therefore one probably needs to pay close attention to news that American, historically the strongest US airline, has announced it […]
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