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Chemicals and the Economy

Michelin Guide to good food highlights austerity

The Michelin Guide is the original good food guide. For over a century, chefs have competed for its coveted 1, 2 and 3 star classification. But for the first time since 1991’s major downturn, the latest edition for France contains not a single new entry at 3 star level, . Instead, and for the first […]

Boom/Gloom Index at a crossroad

The blog’s Boom/Gloom Index presents a fascinating picture this month. The main Index (blue column) remains strongly positive, in keeping with the solid performance of most stock markets. It confirms evidence from other sentiment indices that investors are optimistic about the outlook. But the Austerity index (red line) refuses to collapse. It is, of course, […]

New White Paper now available

We face more uncertainty today than I have ever seen over the past 30 years. Will last year’s strong performance in terms of profit continue? Or will higher oil prices ruin the party? Might China’s demand slow, as the government there worries about rising inflation? How will European demand be impacted as governments switch from […]

Boom/Gloom Index indicates downturn underway

Last month’s IeC Boom/Gloom Index showing a worrying weakness in sentiment, particularly when the world’s major stock markets had actually recorded good performances in July, albeit on low volume. But as the chart shows, this month confirms the downturn reading, with the Index (blue column) below the 4.0 level. Further confirmation of this reading comes […]

Global power shift to the East a “half-truth”

An interesting opinion piece in today’s China Daily suggests the concept that “the next few years will see a dramatic acceleration in the shift of global economic powers eastward” is “at best, a half-truth“. Yu Zhongwen notes that this theory has gained ground in recent years, as the media have speculated that “with a combined […]

Boom/Gloom Index slips to downturn level

There was good and bad news from the latest IeC Boom/Gloom Index. The good news was that the Austerity reading fell quite sharply. Markets have moved on from the Greek crisis. And confidence seems to have been restored, at least temporarily, by the results of the ‘stress tests’ on the major European banks. But the […]

ECB’s Trichet backs austerity measures

Last year, governments focused on stimulus measures, to support the global economy. Now Jean-Claude Trichet, head of the European Central Bank (ECB), says that “with hindsight, we see how unfortunate was the oversimplified message of fiscal stimulus given to all industrial economies under the motto ‘stimulate’, ‘activate’,’ spend’!” Writing in the Financial Times, he is […]

Fear of Austerity replaces hopes of Green Shoots

A year ago, the blog launched its IeC Boom/Gloom Index. This was based on the concept that markets are driven by both sentiment and fundamentals. And whilst fundamentals can be understood by analysing hard data (eg auto sales, housing starts), it is equally important to understand sentiment, and what markets think will happen next. Analysing […]

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