Please join me for the next ACS Chemicals & Economy webinar on Thursday, at 2pm Eastern Standard Time, USA, when we will discuss: How US trade and other key policies will likely change when President-elect Biden takes office? What is happening with international debt, and how will this impact financial markets? What is the new
Groundhog Day 2, last week’s made-for-TV movie set in Pennsylvania, was the perfect lockdown choice. Every morning, one could check the vote tallies. And every evening one could go to bed, knowing that the same screens would be repeating in the morning. Until, eventually, we finally awoke this morning, like Bill Murray in the original
10 years ago, I took a look ahead at what we could expect in the next decade, as discussed last week. Unfortunately, we now face the major economic and social crises that the chart predicted, if policymakers continued with ‘business as usual’. This week, I want to look ahead at what we can expect to
Next week, I will publish my annual Budget Outlook, covering the 2021-2023 period. It will highlight how the pandemic is accelerating major paradigm shifts in society, politics and the global economy. I have been publishing these Outlooks since 2007, and they disprove the idea that forecasting is a waste of time. They highlight instead most
On Friday, the UK premier confirmed what many of us have expected for a long time. There is unlikely to be a trade deal with the EU27 when the UK leaves at the end of December: “We should get ready for 1 January with arrangements that are more like Australia’s – based on simple principles
Companies have entered a new landscape where the coronavirus has accelerated major paradigm shifts, as I discuss in my latest analysis for ICIS Chemical Business. 2020 is proving to be one of those years when time seems to speed up. The pandemic has been the catalyst for a range of paradigm shifts, which are
I spent from September 2015 onwards, during the last US Presidential election, trying to explain why Donald Trump was likely to win. As I noted after the event in November 2016: “It really wasn’t very difficult to see that Donald Trump could win the White House, and that the Republicans could control Congress, for the
Governments spent most of February/March ignoring my warnings here on the dangers posed by the Covid pandemic. Now many are moving in the opposite direction. Unintentionally, they are helping to create fear and panic, which could well lead to another Great Depression and major social unrest. HOW DID WE GET HERE? I began warning of
The chemical industry has a critical role to play in enabling the world to “build back better” after the pandemic. That is the conclusion of the World Economic Forum’s Chemical and Advanced Materials Industry Action Group, for which I had the privilege of acting as an Expert Adviser. Its conclusions are as follows: “Where next?
Last Wednesday, I gave the opening presentation for the ICIS PET Conference and looked at whether the global economy is seeing a Rebound or a full Recovery after the lockdowns? It covered a wide range of topics: Chemicals’ Capacity Utilisation is the best leading indicator for the global economy, and it continues to weaken Central
I warned before the June 2016 Brexit referendum that Brexit was all about politics, and Boris Johnson’s bid to become prime minister: “All the evidence suggests that his real motive for deciding to lead the Leave campaign was that – win or lose – this would make him the likely successor to David Cameron as
NEW YORK (ICIS)–There will be a paradigm shift away from mega crackers producing massive volumes of plastics for export, and toward local recycling of plastic waste for local finished goods production. Joe Chang, editor of ICIS Chemical Business, summarises my presentation earlier this month to the Societe de Chimie Industrielle in New York. “The industry