It’s easy to get caught up in the excitement over the rebound in the Chinese economy and miss underlying weaknesses which point to some major problems ahead. To some extent, in a desperate effort to compensate for collapsing export trade, China might have borrowed from the future in order to achieve a swift recovery. “The […]
Asian Chemical Connections
It’s about scaling down rather than up
One of the new skills being learnt in this current crisis is how to run plants efficiently at low operating rates. “It’s funny that for years now, we’ve worried about how to scale up profitably. Now industry is faced with just the opposite, how to scale down profitably,” says Mark Matzopoulos, chief operating officer at […]
How long can bear-market rallies last?
The current run-up in equities might go on and on – perhaps even for several years, according to economist Russell Napier. But he warns, in this excellent video interview with FT journalist John Authers, that an extended boom in equities doesn’t necessarily mean the economic fundamentals are sound. For example,the stock market rally after the […]
Aussie on a losing wicket
The timing of when to strike the ball is everything in the wonderful sport of cricket – and also, apparently, in the American pastime of baseball. An Australian banker is fond of reminding the English how much better his country is at playing cricket. But his gloating doesn’t extend to how well he’s been timing […]
Micro-management gone too far?
micro-management, human resources, APIC, commodity chemicals, CEOs, credit control, financial meltdown
Reasons to be cheerful?
Any excuse to make a reference to the late, great and wonderful Ian Dury. I sent the following email to my friend in response to the stock market rallies and the green shoots of optimism seemingly turning into beautiful May flowers: “I take it nothing can has fundamentally changed? The confidence couldn’t possibly be so […]
US-Asia Propylene arbitrage closes
arbitrage, US-Asia exports, financial meltdown, piracy, Somalia, ICIS news
It really is a Mad World
As the potential swine flu pandemi threatens more lives – and even more damage to the global economy – it’s time to watch American Idol re-runs. It would be great if we could all collectively retire to some paradise island where Manchester Utd and Chelsea have never won a Premiership trophy, or any kind of […]
Is it better to be right for not quite……
……all the right reasons than to be wrong altogether? Sounds a dumb question, perhaps – unless you take particular pride in being one of those know-it-alls. The point I am trying to make (and assuming that chemicals pricing doesn’t collapse beforehand on a broader retreat in crude and equites on maybe panic over swine flu […]
Is China repeating the mistakes of the US?
My current favourite blogger is Michael Pettis, professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management, who, in his latest post, makes a very worrying point below. As an aside, and without wanting to take the 1930s analogy too far, this debate in China is a little like the split in the 1930s between the internationalists […]
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