William White

China’s renminbi and the global ring of fire

China’s property bubble puts it at the epicentre of the ring of fire © Reuters  China’s devaluation could be the trigger for an international debt crisis, as I describe in my latest post for the Financial Times, published on the BeyondBrics blog August has often seen the start of major debt crises. The Latin American

Boomer SuperCycle unique in human history – Deutsche Bank

“The 1950-2000 period is like no other in human or financial history in terms of population growth, economic growth, inflation or asset prices.” This quote isn’t from ‘Boom, Gloom and the New Normal: How Western BabyBoomers are Changing Demand Patterns, Again‘, the very popular ebook that John Richardson and I published in 2011.  Nor is […]

The post Boomer SuperCycle unique in human history – Deutsche Bank appeared first on Chemicals & The Economy.

Time to recognise the economic impact of ageing populations

Is global economic growth really controlled by monetary policy and interest rates?  Can you create constant growth simply by adjusting government tax and spending policy?  Do we know enough about how the economy operates to be able to do this?  Or has something more fundamental been at work in recent decades, to create the extraordinary […]

The post Time to recognise the economic impact of ageing populations appeared first on Chemicals & The Economy.

“Exponentially rapidly rising or falling markets usually go further than you think, but they do not correct by going sideways”

Companies and investors have some big decisions ahead of them as we start the second half of the year.  They can be summed up in one super-critical question: “Do they believe that global reflation is finally now underway?” The arguments in favour of this analysis were given last week by European Central Bank President, Mario Draghi: […]

Chemical industry flags rising risk of global recession in 2017, with Trump set to “clear the decks” at the start of his first term

The chemical industry is the best leading indicator that we have for the global economy.  It has an excellent correlation with IMF data, and also benefits from the fact it has no “political bias”.  It simply tells us what is happening in real-time in the world’s 3rd largest industry. Sadly, the news is not good. […]

Central banks cannot control economic fortune of 7.3bn people

Trillions of dollars have been spent on stimulus by central banks in the developed world since the financial crisis began in 2008.  Clearly these policies haven’t worked – but they are now lining up to do more of them. In this interview with Tom Brown, deputy editor of ICIS news, I argue that their analysis […]

Global GDP sees record fall in 2015 as world hits “demographic cliff”

Central bankers remain in Denial about the failure of their stimulus policies.  Yet new IMF data for global GDP shows GDP fell by $3.8tn in 2015 – the biggest fall on record – as the world hits the “demographic cliff”.  We have now seen 2 record falls in 6 years, as the previous record was $3.3tn […]

“World faces wave of epic debt defaults” – central bank veteran

Only one central banker spotted the subprime crisis before it occurred – William White.  Now he is warning that the world will have to revive the Old Testament concept of “debt jubilees“, with much of today’s debt being written off: “Debts have continued to build up over the last eight years and they have reached such […]

Policymakers’ out-of-date economic models fail to create growth, again

Since 2010, May/June has seen the US Federal Reserve start to realise it would have to revise its optimistic New Year forecast that economic recovery was inevitable. As its deputy chairman, Stanley Fischer, noted last August “Year after year we have had to explain from mid-year on why the global growth rate has been lower than […]

“It’s worse than 2007, because then it was a problem of the developed economies”

William White was the only central banker to publicly warn of the risks to the world economy long before the Crisis, when he was chief economist of the Bank for International Settlements (the central bankers’ bank).  He also warned of the problems that would be caused by their stimulus programmes as early as September 2009. A blog […]