The weekend’s finance minister meeting in Washington DC seems to have been quite different from its predecessors. Not only did they apparently have an ‘informal brainstorming session’ at one point, but they also found themselves confronted with two major and on-going crises: • We have to ‘put food into hungry mouths’ commented Bob Zoellick, President […]
Chemicals and the Economy
Credit crisis losses could reach $1 trillion – IMF
Last week the IMF warned there was a 25% chance of a global recession in 2008. Today, it said that the ‘crisis (was) creating serious macroeconomic feedback effects’ and could have ‘profound financial system and macroeconomic implications’. We normally expect central bankers to weigh their words carefully. But now the IMF has decided to throw […]
IMF expects low growth, high inflation
The IMF now sees a 25% chance of a world recession this year, in which global growth would fall below 3%. Its base forecast is just 3.7%, compared to 5.2% before the credit crunch began. Sales growth for most chemicals is tied to GDP growth, so companies should expect volumes to come under pressure as […]
Fed/IMF worry that US may see ‘severe recession’
The Financial Times this morning reports that the US Fed fears that ‘the economic downturn in the US could turn into a deep and protracted recession of the kind that plagued Japan’. Clearly based on interviews with senior Fed officials and other policymakers, the two articles (one for the European edition, and one for the […]
IMF identifies ‘serious slowdown’
The credit crunch and associated debt crisis has elicited an unprecedented response from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Today, the head of the IMF, Dominique Strauss-Kohn, told the Financial Times that the new IMF economic forecasts would ‘show a serious economic slowdown that needs a serious response’. Just last autumn, the IMF was calling for […]
Will lower interest rates help?
A reader has kindly sent me an interesting analysis from Richard Bernstein, Chief Investment Strategist at Merrill Lynch (ML)*. He argues that ‘the Fed can lower interest rates quite a lot, but they will likely have minimal impact on the economy unless credit creation grows’. Bernstein says their research indicates that US credit availability is […]
Policymakers turn more downbeat
There has been a noted change of tone from leading policymakers in the past few days. Gone is the jaunty confidence that the world economy is ‘fundamentally sound’. This has been replaced by a sense that debt market problems may have a wider impact than first expected. US Treasury Secretary, Hank Paulson, typified the new […]
To cut, or not to cut?
One of the benefits of writing this blog is that it provides the opportunity to research behind the headlines, and better understand what is really happening. Friday’s US payrolls report, which showed the first loss of US jobs for 4 years, is a classic example. Nobody in the chemical industry should have been too surprised […]
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