The IeC Boom/Gloom Index (blue column) proved its value again last month. It shot to a new record high, and this was then followed by a record high for both the S&P 500 (red line) and the Dow Jones Industrials. But now the Index has fallen sharply. This highlights the major divergence between developments in the […]
Chemicals and the Economy
China’s credit cuts will send seismic tremors around the world
Monday’s Interesting Quotes post highlighted how China’s leadership clearly recognise they have a massive debt problem, as detailed in the blog’s recent Research Note. Further evidence for this was provided by yesterday’s bank lending figures, which showed total lending down 19% versus March 2013 at Rmb2.07tn ($333bn), and the lowest increase in money supply since 2001. This makes […]
Oil prices vulnerable to China property market fall
Oil futures markets are a wonderful thing, in theory. They are supposed to enable price discovery, whilst their liquidity is meant to enable companies to reduce inventory levels. Instead of tying up working capital, they can simply go to the market and buy what they need, when they need it. But the chart above, of US oil […]
Cement Shen’s $563m ‘Peach Blossom Palace’ bankruptcy
The sight above may become more familiar as China’s new leadership seek to burst the property bubble. It shows unfinished town houses on the Peach Blossom Palace estate in Fenghua city, south of Shanghai. They were built by local developer ‘Cement Shen’, whose Zhejiang Xingrun (ZX) property company went bust last month, owing Rmb3.5bn ($563m). […]
Demographics drive demand and fertility rates have fallen
A major debate is underway in Eurozone financial markets about the imminent approach of deflation. As the chart above shows, Eurozone inflation has ben falling steadily for the past 2 years. Yet most still fail to recognise that today’s demographics make this development more or less inevitable. The Financial Times has kindly printed the blog’s […]
China’s lending problems begin to worry wider world – too late
Suddenly, people are starting to talk about China and the risks it creates for the global economy. There is a lifecycle to the way that such issues develop in the general consciousness, as John Mauldin has observed. And so this development suggests that we are now well along the process, as highlighted in the chart above: […]
UK tinkers with higher pension ages, ignores impact on GDP
Many readers have asked to see how the UK economy is being impacted by its ageing population, following the blog’s December series on the US, China, Japan, Germany and France. As the chart shows, it is in a very similar position to all of these countries: Life expectancy has increased by 17% to 81 years today, from […]
China’s urban consumers depend on property ‘wealth effect’
One of the great myths of modern times is that China is now full of middle class people with Western levels of consumption. Nothing could be further from the truth. Annual per capita incomes have certainly soared over the past two decades. But the main impact has been to lift people out of absolute poverty, […]
China’s lending bubble could now lead to zero GDP growth
China has been primarily responsible for driving global growth since the Crisis began in 2008. Auto sales, for example, would have seen negative growth world-wide without China. And auto manufacturing is the world’s largest manufacturing industry. The chemical industry has been in a similar position. Whilst China is also now responsible for nearly 50% of global […]
And now the stumble?
Last week the US Federal Reserve announced the second move in its so-called tapering process, and reduced its bond buying by another $10bn/month. But there was only a temporary repeat in stock markets of the enthusiastic response to its first reduction in December. We are thus about to test whether the blog’s theory of ‘two steps and a […]