Something quite dramatic is happening in the global economy. Of course, Wall Street analysts still maintain that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic will be over by the summer. What else can they say, given their income mostly depends on persuading the public to buy shares? But anyone on Main Street knows that it will […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Financial markets enter their Convulsion phase
Many companies and investors are still comparing today’s downturn to the 9-month hiccups seen after the 1990/91 Gulf War and the 2000/1 dotcom crash. In reality, however, this is wishful thinking, as the IMF highlighted last week in its World Economic Outlook: “The Great Lockdown: Worst Economic Downturn Since the Great Depression” One key question, […]
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 […]
A new recession era to emerge
Contingency planning has become mission-critical. The longer the coronavirus pandemic continues, the more it will expose the underlying fragility of today’s debt-laden global economy. Companies therefore have to move into crisis management mode, with a number of key areas requiring immediate attention: • Employee health and safety is the top priority. Governments are slowly waking […]
Chain’s smartphone and auto sales tumble as coronavirus hits demand
China is the world’s largest market for smartphones and autos – responsible for c30% of global sales for both. Yet as Reuters notes: “Most western policymakers and journalists view the world economy through a framework that is 10-15 years out of date, failing to account fully for the enormous shift in activity towards China and […]
China’s lockdown makes global debt crisis now almost certain
Beijing has a population of 21.5 million, but you wouldn’t know it from this BBC video from last Thursday. Normally busy streets and transport systems are eerily empty, with food deliveries often the main traffic on the roads. It’s the same picture in industry, with the Baidu Migration Index reporting only 26% of migrant workers […]
Financial markets head for (another) train crash as coronavirus starts to impact
China’s industrial heartland of Hubei (pop 59m) and its capital Wuhan (pop 11m) have now been locked down for nearly a month as a result of the coronavirus COVID-2019 epidemic. In total, more than half of the population (760m) are subject to some form of residential lock down. Yet as with the subprime crisis in […]
Coronavirus disruptions make global recession almost certain
Last month, our Hong Kong-based pH Report colleague, Daniël de Blocq van Scheltinga, warned of the “Possible development (epidemic?) of the Wuhan SARS like illness, and economic impact?” His current view of developments, and their likely impact, is as follows: Hubei, the epicentre of the corona virus epidemic, is a province in central China, where […]
Your A to Z Guide to the Brexit trade negotiations
A. Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty set out the rules for leaving the European Union. As with most negotiations, it assumed the leaving country would present its proposals for the post-withdrawal period – which would then be finalised with the other members. The UK government, however, has still not yet set out its post-Brexit […]
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