OPEC+ oil producers saw prices tumble $10/bbl (13%) on Friday as the world woke up to the fact that the next phase of the pandemic may be underway. And this is not the only challenge that they face. OIL PRICES HAVE ONLY BEEN HELD UP BY MAJOR SUPPLY CUTBACKS The first is the challenge from […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Xi aims to “bring order out of chaos” by bursting China’s property bubble
China is at the start of its biggest economic shake-up since 1978, when Deng Xiaoping launched his post-Mao reform programme. President Xi Jinping’s ‘Common Prosperity’ policy aims to retain his focus on increasing living standards. But it wants to spread the wealth far more widely. The electricity rationing now underway across China highlights the need […]
An Evergrande default could reset the Chinese, and global, economy
China’s economy has been ‘subprime on steroids’ since the financial crisis in 2008. And essentially, this has morphed into a giant Ponzi scheme, where some property developers used deposits paid by new buyers to finance the construction of apartments they’d already sold. Now the world’s most indebted property developer, Evergrande, has warned it may default […]
Pandemic leads to ‘baby bust’ as births decline in most countries
A year ago, many were suggesting the lockdowns might produce a “baby boom” as couples spent more time together. But early data suggests the world is instead seeing a “baby bust”. As Nikkei Asia reports: “Births (in December/January) have fallen between 10% and 20% in such countries as Japan, France and Spain — and even […]
China’s dual circulation policy aims to reduce debt reliance
Every now and then, people wake up to the fact that debt is only good news when it adds to growth. Otherwise, it simply destroys value. China is usually the case study for this analysis, as the chart confirms. It shows the rise in debt from 2002, when official data begins, versus the rise in […]
“They may ring their bells now, before long they will be wringing their hands”
The wisdom of Sir Robert Walpole, the UK’s first premier, seems the only possible response to this weekend’s headline from the Wall Street Journal. How can a National Emergency ever be the basis for a major rise in stock markets? Of course, we all know that stock markets have become addicted to stimulus. But the […]
China GDP reports remain “man-made and therefore unreliable”
The blog got 54.8m results from Google when it entered the phrase “China GDP” this week. The only problem, seemingly unrecognised by most analysts, is that China’s GDP report is a completely fictitious number, invented by the leadership each quarter to suit its own narrative. This sounds a bold statement, but it isn’t: China is the only country to […]
China’s earthquake opens fault-lines in debt-fuelled ‘ring of fire’
We can all hope that China’s ‘collateral trade’ turns out not to be as big a problem as seems likely. But history shows that this type of problem has a way of escalating once people start investigating more closely. Thus state-owned Citic revealed yesterday that it has lost $40m in the Qingdao scandal, as half of its […]
China’s commodity imports have financed its property bubble
Today, the blog launches a major new Research Note in the ‘Your Compass on China’ series, produced in association with leading Hong Kong-based financial advisory firm Polarwide. Titled ‘Here today and gone tomorrow – a simple guide to China’s world of trade finance’, it is probably the single most important paper it will publish all […]
Prime Beijing house prices drop 40% since December
China’s property market is the epicentre of the global debt bubble discussed yesterday. It has been red-hot since urban residents became free to buy their own home in 1998. Before then, they lived where the state told them. With interest rates held low to boost state-funded infrastructure spending, people had few options for investing their money. The […]
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