Millions of people around the world are already having to cutback on buying food for their families due to today’s high prices. By wintertime, the risk is that they will have to choose between buying food or heating their homes.
Chemicals and the Economy
World Bank, IMF warn of famine risk as Russia’s war hits wheat output and hikes fertilizer costs
Essentially, the problem is a timebomb which is set to explode next winter unless governments work together to increase arable planting, establish emergency stocks, and subsidize fertilizer costs whilst gas prices remain at today’s record levels.
Oil prices signal potential end to the V-shaped recovery myth
Oil prices have moved into another ‘flag shape’ – which previously provided critical warning of the March collapse, and of those in 2014 and 2008. The shape is important as it means the bulls and bears have been battling each other to exhaustion, making it likely one or the other will give up. This time, […]
Economic risks rise as the lockdowns end
It is now 13 years since I wrote the first post here, in June 2007. A lot has happened since then: There was the 2008 subprime crisis, forecast here and in the Financial Times – although sadly, few took advantage of the warning This led to the publication of ‘Boom, Gloom and the New Normal: How […]
World risks moving from Denial into Anger as the Paradigm of Loss moves forward
The head of the IMF has warned again on the likely scale of the economic depression ahead: “Global growth will turn sharply negative in 2020. In fact, we anticipate the worst economic fallout since the Great Depression.” None of us have ever seen a health crisis on the scale of Covid-19 . Nor have we […]
The world has wasted 3 months – there is little time now left to avoid a Covid-19 catastrophe
It is now 3 months since China’s state television broadcast the first news of the Wuhan virus, now known as Covid-19. And it is almost 3 months since China released the first genetic sequence for the virus on 9 January. But with certain notable exceptions, governments since then have mostly failed to properly activate their […]
The End of “Business as Usual”
In my interview for Real Vision earlier this month, (where the world’s most successful investors share their thoughts on the markets and the biggest investment themes), I look at what data from the global chemical industry is telling us about the outlook for the global economy and suggest it could be set for a downturn. “We look at […]
Chemical output signals trouble for global economy
A petrochemical plant on the outskirts of Shanghai. Chinese chemical industry production has been negative on a year-to-date basis since February Falling output in China and slowing growth globally suggest difficult years ahead, as I describe in my latest post for the Financial Times, published on the BeyondBrics blog Chemicals are the best leading indicator for the […]
China’s lending bubble is history
As China’s shadow banking is reined in, the impact on the global economy is already clear, as I describe in my latest post for the Financial Times, published on the BeyondBrics blog China’s shadow banking sector has been a major source of speculative lending to the global economy. But 2018 has seen it entering its […]
Chemical industry data shows reflation remains hope, not reality
Western central bankers are convinced reflation and economic growth are finally underway as a result of their $14tn stimulus programmes. But the best leading indicator for the global economy – capacity utilisation (CU%) in the global chemical industry – is saying they are wrong. The CU% has an 88% correlation with actual GDP growth, far […]
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