- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey, Managing Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
I recently had the pleasure of being invited to the Bank of America - Merrill Lynch 'Global Research Macro Year Ahead Press Briefing' in the City of London. The heads of EMEA Research, of European Equities Strategy, International Credit Research and other high-powered banking types gave their prognoses on the prospects for the global economy in 2012. The gathering had all the joie de vivre of a wake.
Laurence Boone, the polished 'Head of Developed Europe Economics' was first to burst the bubble of positive expectations: She expects a drop in GDP for Europe as a whole of 2-3% in 2012, meaning a continuing European recession (which she said had already started in 4Q2011) that will continue through the whole of the first half of 2012. European banks will undertake 'deleveraging' (paying off debts) of around Euro1.5trillion in 2012.
- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey, Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
A year ago, at the Global Gypsum Conference in Paris, the question was asked, several times and by a number of people, 'What will be the date of the start of the recovery from this awful mess that we are in at the moment.' The response, from the assembled experts, was that if things go well, then we should be seeing the start of recovery by the autumn of 2011. Oh dear.
You need to remember, that in autumn 2010, we had just witnessed two years of mind-blowing financial market turbulence, company failures, house repossessions and deepening unemployment. Back then it looked like things could not get much worse, and - as a result - things would shortly start to improve.
Ah, the triumph of hope over experience (the definition of a second marriage by some wags). What we had not realised back in the halcyon days of autumn 2010 was things could get worse. And indeed they did.
- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey, Managing Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
We seem to be at - or coming to - a crossroads. After the calamitous year of 2008 - when we saw a rising tide of sub-prime defaults, culminating in runs on banks, the seize-up of global credit markets, the collapse into bankruptcy of one of the world's largest banks (Lehman Brothers) and a number of others, the bailout of AIG (which insured many of the deals done between the rest of the banks), the effective nationalisation of other 'megabanks' (think Lloyds TSB, Associated Irish Bank and others), the sale of previously rock-solid institutions at 'fire-sale' prices (several big American banks), the utter collapse of the over-bloated construction industry on both sides of the Atlantic and the decimation of global stock markets (all summarised brilliantly in a book entitled 'Too big to fail' by Andrew Ross Sorkin) - things have been relatively quiet.
- Written by Dr Peter Edwards, Deputy Editor, Global Gypsum Magazine
2011 is still young, but already it has lived through enough big news stories to last a decade. Since the start of January there have been revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt and other events of varying severity in other Arab states across the Middle East and North Africa have dominated the news. Then came the escalation of the situation in Libya, with updates every hour and the 6.3 magniude Christchurch earthquake in New Zealand. The earthquake took 182 lives, rendered vast areas of the city uninhabitable and turned life in this resilliant country, where earthquakes are a fact of life, upside down.
- Written by Dr Robert McCaffrey, Editor, Global Cement Magazine
At one recent event I attended, an unusual topic that came up (almost inevitably 'at the bar') was 'What would you do if you won £1m on the lottery?' For international readers, that's probably Euro1.2m or US$1.5m.
Well, nowadays, you can't do an awful lot with it: in fact, they have worked out that with the ravages of inflation, you need to have about UK£3m in the bank to be able to live the life of a millionaire (or at least a millionaire in the 1970s, the last time that a million pounds was really a lot of money). So, to give myself a little bit of leeway, I'd like to consider what I'd do with UK£10m. (The latest 'Rich List' for the UK requires that you have at least UK£70m to be in the top 1000 richest people in Britain, so £10m isn't that much).
