The above chart is the blog’s simple guide to forecasting China’s auto sales. We know from all the data that most Chinese are far too poor to afford to buy a car out of their income. Average per capita consumer spending in the towns is just $2600/year, after all. While rural incomes are only a […]
Chemicals and the Economy
London house price bubble hits the record books
The UK no longer leads the world in soccer, as next month’s World Cup will confirm. But it can still hold its own when it comes to creating house price bubbles. China would be the obvious winner of the World Bubble Championship, with Shanghai prices at an eye-watering 29 times average earnings. But London would have […]
Free China outlook webinar on Wednesday
The blog’s recent Research Note on the likely impact of China’s economic reforms has attracted enormous interest. As a result, it will hold 2 free webinars on Wednesday to discuss the outlook in more detail. The webinars will be co-hosted with John Richardson, author of the Asian Chemical Connections blog – and co-author with the blog of Boom, […]
China’s slowdown accelerates as IOUs substitute for credit
The end of Q1 seems a good moment to look back at the position of the benchmark markets in the IeC Downturn Monitor. Compared to previous quarters, there has been surprisingly little movement: Benzene has remained the most volatile, with supply outages temporarily pushing up prices (green line) HDPE has trended higher, but these are […]
Local buyers priced out of London housing market
Most people, if they are lucky, never get to see a property bubble during their lives. But those of us alive today have seen two distinct types of bubble in action: The first has been the Ponzi-type bubble sponsored by government lending policies, as seen in the subprime era and now in China. These take […]
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 […]
US PVC exports fail to grow in 2013, despite shale gas boost
Trade data for net US PVC exports seems to be trying to tell us something very important about the current state of the global economy. As the chart shows, based on data from Global Trade Information Services: Net exports failed to grow in 2013 (red column) versus 2012 (black) and were only up 2% versus 2011 […]
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, […]
“The dog ate my homework”: excuses for economic slowdown
There were never any excuses from policymakers during the BabyBoomer-led SuperCycle from 1983 – 2007. The Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, came to be styled ‘The Maestro’. Whilst the Governor of the Bank of England argued that his efforts had created the NICE decade of Non-Inflationary Constant Expansion. Central bankers came to be seen as wise […]
US house price recovery “living on borrowed time”
Housing used to be the key driver for US chemical demand in the SuperCycle, and went into overdrive in the subprime era between 2003-6, when housing starts rose to 2 million/year. We don’t yet have December’s data, but we already know that 2013’s total will be only half this level, despite all policymakers’ efforts to revive the […]
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