Last year it was Bitcoin, in 2016 it was the near-doubling in US 10-year interest rates, and in 2015 was the oil price fall. This year, once again, there is really only one candidate for ‘Chart of the Year’ – it has to be the collapse of China’s shadow banking bubble: It averaged around $20bn/month […]
Chemicals and the Economy
BASF’s second profit warning highlights scale of the downturn now underway
The chemical industry is easily the best leading indicator for the global economy. And thanks to Kevin Swift and his team at the American Chemistry Council, we already have data showing developments up to October, as the chart shows. It confirms that consensus hopes for a “synchronised global recovery” at the beginning of the year […]
Budgeting for the end of “Business as Usual”
Companies and investors are starting to finalise their plans for the coming year. Many are assuming that the global economy will grow by 3% – 3.5%, and are setting targets on the basis of “business as usual”. This has been a reasonable assumption for the past 25 years, as the chart confirms for the US economy: […]
Hurricane Harvey will turbocharge move to the circular economy
300,000 homes and half a million cars have been destroyed by Hurricane Harvey. And in terms of business, it is often forgotten that Houston is home to more Fortune 500 companies than any other metro area than New York. The damage will take years to repair, as families have to regroup and re-establish their lives […]
Hurricane Harvey: lack of insurance will hit Houston’s recovery
“By Monday, the third straight day of flooding, the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey had left much of the region underwater, and the city of Houston looked like a sea dotted by small islands. ‘This event is unprecedented,’ the National Weather Service tweeted. ‘All impacts are unknown and beyond anything experienced.’” This summary from the New […]
China’s used cars put a dent in global industry
China is now developing a used car market for the first time in its history. This means the end of global auto sales growth, as I describe in my latest post for the Financial Times, published on the BeyondBrics blog China’s car market has been key to the recovery in global auto sales growth since […]
EU auto sales boosted by self-registration of unsold cars
The global auto market is currently dominated by China, where sales have more than trebled over the past 10 years. But the other 6 major markets have not always done so well. Their total sales are up just 4.3% since they peaked before the Crisis began in 2007. As the chart, showing January – August sales since […]
Auto sales confirm critical flaws in the BRIC concept
, It is 15 years since Goldman Sachs coined the word BRIC to highlight their argument that growth in the global economy would, in future, be led by the major emerging economies rather than the developed world. The core concept was that China and India would become the dominant suppliers of manufactured goods and services, whilst Brazil […]
China’s slowdown continues as Xi “takes the pain” of reform
“What a difference a day makes“. Dinah Washington’s famous song could well be applied, with a longer timescale, to developments in China’s economy. The shape of the above chart has changed completely since it was last featured here in January 2015, as volatility has increased in China’s economy. It shows the relationship between bank lending and […]
Auto sales and the oil price: the Great Unwinding continues
Serious questions need to be asked about the likely level of future demand growth for oil and auto sales in Emerging Markets (EMs), as I describe in my latest post for the Financial Times, published on the BeyondBrics blog Oil market volatility has reached near-record levels in H1 this year, as the first chart shows. […]
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