Macro Macchiato

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Macro Macchiato: Diversity, and a Grand Tour

It’s been a busy few months at Shipping Strategy. At home we have been working on delivering the data crunching and analysis deliverables for a project we find very exciting, viz. the Diversity Study Group (www.diversitystudygroup.com). We have been working with Halcyon Recruitment Ltd’s MD, Heidi Heseltine on this project. “DSG” as we have come to know it aims to promote best practice in HR diversity policies and strategies. It’s a membership association in effect, within which ship owners, managers and commodity traders can benchmark their diversity policies against their peer group and gain insights via employee surveys into how their colleagues perceive corporate support for different n

Five kinds of risk: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

It’s Marine Money week in New York City. In a year in which capital raising has fallen in most industries, largely because of geopolitical uncertainty, what will be the most common conversations in the lobbies of the Pierre Hotel and the Manhattan restaurants? The conference agenda lays out an extensive range of discussions for delegates. Reading it, I was struck by how seemingly new challenges actually fall into a traditional range of risks for ship owners and the wider industry to manage. Perhaps this resonated with me because last week I was in Denmark teaching at the Danish Shipping Academy. I was giving our latest course, “Five types of risk in shipping and how to manage them.” For old

What effect are the US-China trade wars having? (Macro Macchiato 10/06/19

We’re told by Those Who Know that the US-China trade wars are cutting global trade and economic growth. We should be Very Afraid. GDP forecasts are down and luminaries at the World Bank and the IMF are warning of slower global growth as a direct result of the trade spat. But the economic data from both the US and China continue to defy the Cassandras. The latest US jobs report showed 75,000 new jobs created in May, half of the expected rate, but US jobless data aren’t growing with unemployment in May holding steady at 4.6%. Wages in May grew by 3.1% overall and at 3.4% for non-supervisory workers. Despite wage growth and higher import costs, inflation is holding steady, with April’s index sh

If you’re going to occupy the moral high ground, you’d better make sure your boots are clean. (Macro

If you’re going to occupy the moral high ground, you’d better make sure your boots are clean. My Sunday evening reading included this humdinger as reported by Reuters: Speaking on Sunday at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia’s premier defence summit, China’s Defence Minister Wei Fenghe warned the United States not to meddle in security disputes over Taiwan and the South China Sea. On Saturday, acting U.S. Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan told the meeting that the United States would no longer “tiptoe” around Chinese behaviour in Asia. “Perhaps the greatest long-term threat to the vital interests of states across this region comes from actors who seek to undermine, rather than uphol

Macro Macchiato

your coffee-break companion

Macro Macchiato: Covid, China and the Future for US Oil Exports

Middle Kingdom Comes Out on Top

Macro Macchiato: Trust Me, I'm an Analyst

Macro Macchiato: Diversity, and a Grand Tour

Five kinds of risk: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

What effect are the US-China trade wars having? (Macro Macchiato 10/06/19

If you’re going to occupy the moral high ground, you’d better make sure your boots are clean. (Macro