Helping you navigate the new normal
Suddenly, manufacturing and protectionism have become political issues across the Western world. President Trump has already formed a Manufacturing Council with the aim of “reshoring jobs” from outside the USA, and is threatening to introduce import duties of up to 45%. The problem, however, as the chart shows, is that this will not help the people who […]
Cotton prices appear to be collapsing again due to the surpluses created by central bank stimulus policies since 2009. As the chart shows, these had initially caused prices to soar to levels not seen since the American Civil War: They reached 230c/lb in March 2011, nearly double the post-1982 peak of 117c/lb in May 1995 (blue […]
Current farming techniques haven’t changed much over thousands of years. Yet the people who eat the food that comes from farms no longer live next door to them. So the food has to be transported ever-greater distances – sometimes thousands of kilomet…
The downturn in the US housing market is turning out to have a silver lining, according to the Wall Street Journal.
It describes how farmers in some areas are now able to buy back land previously sold for housing development, and return it to agricult…
Yesterday’s financial market action was very revealing. As Olivier Jakob of Petromatrix perceptively describes it, “liquidation on gasoline led to a correction in crude oil, which in turn pressured equity markets”. The problem is that financial markets now seem to …
