The aim of this blog is to share ideas about the influences that may shape the chemical industry over the next 12-18 months. It will try to look behind today’s headlines, to understand what may happen next in important issues such oil prices, economic growth, and the environment.
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The Wall Street Journal draws an apt comparison between the strict regulation of chemical companies, and the lack of effective regulation on financial firms. It comments:
A trend seems to be developing amongst the world's policy makers. Last month saw China and the UK's finance ministries warning of bad times to come. Yesterday, France's finance minister joined the chorus, saying that she had 'underestimated the...
Housing is a vital market for chemical companies. It boomed in the US and other Western countries as credit standards were relaxed between 2003-7. Now it is at the centre of the credit crunch.
A year ago, the noted investment analyst, Jeremy Grantham, described the credit crisis as a 'slow motion train wreck'. The Financial Times has now updated the metaphor to describe what has happened since.
Tighter lending standards, and higher spreads for borrowers, are continuing to create headwinds for the US economy. As far back as January, senior loan officers...
EU auto sales continued to improve in November versus 2008, with total volumes up 27%. But as the chart from ACEA (EU Automobile Manufacturers Assoc) shows, they were still lower than in 2007.
The difference between sales in W Europe, and in the new...
The blog continues to believe that the current downturn is a transition period, at least in the West, towards a more frugal way of life. And its theory has received a boost from a New York Times feature which suggests this might be happening in the...
"The most important 'fuel' of all, will be energy saved through fuel efficiency". That's ExxonMobil's (EM) latest view of the outlook for meeting world energy demand over the next 20 years.
And as Nigel Davis highlights in ICIS insight, this "will...
For most of this year, the banks' trading houses have been earning vast sums of money promoting the "correlation trade" (sell the US$, buy crude oil, gold and equities). As a result, around 150mbbls of oil and oil products is now in floating storage,...
"The more things change, the more they stay the same". Or, as the blog's French-speaking readership might say, "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".
When the blog started work in the chemical industry, in 1978, it was possible to pay up to...
