Every New Year starts with optimism about the global economy. But as Stanley Fischer, then vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, noted back in August 2014:
“Year after year we have had to explain from mid-year on why the global growth rate has been lower than predicted as little as two quarters back.”
Will 2018 be any different? Once again, the IMF and other forecasters have been lining up to tell us the long-awaited “synchronized global recovery” is now underway. But at the same, they say they are puzzled that the US$ is so weak. As the Financial Times headline asked:
“Has the US dollar stopped making sense?”
If the global economy was really getting stronger, then the US$ would normally be rising, not falling. So could it be that the economy is not, actually, seeing the promised recovery?
OIL/COMMODITY PRICE INVENTORY BUILD HAS FOOLED THE EXPERTS, AGAIN
It isn’t hard to discover why the experts have been fooled. Since June, we have been seeing the usual rise in “apparent demand” that always accompanies major commodity price rises. Oil, after all, has already risen by 60%.
Contrary to economic theory, companies down the value chains always build inventory in advance of potential price rises. Typically, this adds about 10% to real demand, equal to an extra month in the year. Then, when the rally ends, companies destock again and “apparent demand” weakens again.
The two charts above confirm that the rally had nothing to do with a rise in “real demand”:
Their buying has powered the rise in oil prices, based on the free cash being handed out by the central banks, particularly in Europe and Japan, as part of their stimulus programmes.
