The blog was speaking last week at the major Euromoney investor conference on bond markets. It followed a keynote by the head of the UK’s Debt Management Office, who noted that the Bank of England now ‘owned’ ~30% of total UK government debt compared to none in 2008 The reaction to his speech revealed just how investor […]
Chemicals and the Economy
One in three US adults now in the New Old 55+ generation
“Its only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” We may soon discover the meaning of this wisdom from Warren Buffett, one of the world’s leading investors. The reason is that the macro trends that have driven growth in the global chemical sector are now turning. For the past five […]
One in four Japanese now over 65 years
Japan’s new government has embarked on a desperate gamble to restore economic growth after 2 decades of decline. Unfortunately, it is doomed to fail. The chart from the Financial Times, explains why. And the reason is very simple: One in four Japanese are now over the age of 65 And this proportion is continuing to rise, […]
EU auto sales at lowest-ever level, with average car used only 1 hour per day
Europe goes on holiday during August, so we have to wait – with not quite breathless anticipation – until September to see official ACEA auto sales figures for July and August. Unfortunately, they contained no real surprises. July (red square) managed a small increase versus 2012 levels (green line), but August sales then fell back […]
Decline in women’s earnings hits household budgets
The blog’s latest post for the Financial Times FT Data blog is below. September 20, 2013 2:47 pm by FT Whilst the number of working women in the UK continues to rise, since 2009 their total earnings have been falling in real terms. With consumer spending contributing to roughly 60 per cent of the UK […]
US Federal Reserve cuts growth forecast, again
5 years after the Crisis began, there still seems to be a worrying lack of accountability in the banking sector, even when things go wrong on an epic scale. Take JP Morgan Chase, for example: It lost $6.2bn in London last year, which its CEO Jamie Dimon initially called “a tempest in a teapot” It has now been […]
Apple’s iPhone launch marks retreat from China’s mass-market
Apple will report great sales this weekend from its iPhone launch in China. But these cannot disguise its major problem in selling its high-priced iPhones there. Its difficulties highlight the dangers for those who believe that China has now become a ‘middle-class’ country with most of the population having incomes close to Western levels. Back in 2010, the analysts […]
Cotton reserves equal 3 pairs of jeans for every person in the world
Cotton will be one of the main case studies used by future historians to highlight the failure of post-Crisis policies from 2008 onwards. It highlights all the key issues: Their tidal wave of liquidity took cotton prices, as the chart shows, to all-time record levels. They soared to a record monthly level of 230c/lb in March 2011, nearly double […]
Higher US interest rates will test housing market strength
The above chart will be familiar to readers of Boom, Gloom and the New Normal. It shows the way in which Japan’s interest rates (black line, bottom axis) have been a leading indicator for US interest rates (red line, top axis) since the stock market peaks of 1990 in Japan and 2000 in the USA. […]
Chloralkali output suggests EU and US recoveries still to appear
Chlorine and caustic soda markets rarely lie about the underlying state of demand. The reason is not just because they have been widely used for over 125 years. But the production process is also relatively flexible, and can be adjusted within minutes to align with supply/demand changes. So the picture in the chart above of falling chlorine production […]
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