This is Budget Outlook week in the blog. And for the rest of the week, it is looking at a key issue in a major Region. Today, it highlights the US housing market. This used to be a $35bn market for chemicals, with up to 2.2m housing starts a year, each worth $16k in sales. […]
Chemicals and the Economy
China warns of stability risks from housing bubble
China’s leadership seems to be increasingly confident about its ability to redirect the economy towards more domestic consumption over time, and away from the previous over-reliance on exports. As the above chart shows, bank lending (red column) is well on track to meet the $1.1trn target set for 2010, down 21% from 2009’s high. In […]
China’s house prices “still too high”
Early last year, China’s leadership faced the prospect of social unrest, as 23 million people lost their jobs as Western demand dropped for China’s exports. The government bought itself time to deal with this problem by throwing money at it – $1.4trn of bank lending, and $580bn of stimulus. Earlier this year, the government then […]
Questions to the chemical market genie
With the Chairman of the US Federal Reserve saying the outlook is “unusually uncertain“, its time to summon the chemical market genie. Of course, rubbing the lamp is not always successful. And if the genie does arrive, one can only ask 3 questions. So rather than risk wasting them, the blog has learnt to spend […]
Baby-Boomers cut spending, start saving
Consumer spending is 70% of US GDP. And because US GDP is so large, this means the US consumer is 17% of global GDP. This is the same as the combined GDP of China and Japan, who rank 2 and 3 after the USA. So a change in US consumer spending matters. And it particularly […]
China’s auto and housing markets weaken
“There are 64.5 million empty apartments and houses in China’s urban areas“, according to Barrons, the US investment magazine. The figure comes from a survey of the country’s electricity meters, undertaken by China’s Academy of Social Sciences. To date, China’s homebuyers remain convinced that home prices cannot fall, as shown by their willingness last year […]
China’s economy flashes an amber light
China’s chemical demand is clearly starting to slow, as my fellow blogger John Richardson has been reporting recently. This has big implications for the global chemical industry, which has relied on China to balance declining sales in the West. The slowdown comes as the government rolls back the stimulus measures introduced in Q4 2008, when […]
Fed, American Chemistry Council, worry about US economy
The US Federal Reserve and the American Chemistry Council (ACC) have joined the blog in expressing concern about the outlook for the US economy. And as the chart above of the US S&P 500 shows, financial markets have continued to weaken since the blog’s advice on 8 May to “sell in May and go away“. […]
The blog’s 3rd birthday
The blog continues to go from strength to strength. It is now read in 130 countries and 3680 cities, up from 111 countries and 2088 cities a year ago. Its readership is truly global, with the Top 10 countries including Benelux, China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Singapore, Turkey, UK and USA. It has also expanded […]
US new home sales fall 33%
The blog is in gloomy mood today, in spite of last night’s England World Cup win. Not because Wall Street ‘analysts’ maintained last month’s 33% drop in US new home sales was ‘unexpected‘. Nor even that the consensus forecast is still for 700k housing starts this year, when current data suggest that last year’s 560k […]
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