Look Mum, we’re in the papers! It isn’t often that shipping finds its way onto the pages of the mainstream press. Usually it’s because of bad news. This week it’s because the US-Iran phony war has spread to the tanker market and has leached into the US-China trade war. Last week the US State Department announced that, as part of its sanctions on Iran, it would sanction oil tanker companies that lift Iranian oil. Two units of China’s Cosco tanker shipping arm were named. COSCO

On Sunday, to mark the UN Climate Summit in New York, the World Meteorological Organisation published new data showing 2014-19 to be the warmest five-year-period on record at 1.1 Celsius above the average for 1850-1900 average. Here are some key findings: “Arctic summer sea-ice extent has declined at a rate of approximately 12% per decade during 1979-2018. The four lowest values for winter sea-ice extent occurred between 2015 and 2019. Overall, the amount of ice lost annually

However many billions the Saudis have spent on defence, it wasn’t enough to prevent the weekend attacks on Abqaiq. Half of Saudi oil production, around 5 Mn bpd, has been taken offline for an indeterminate period. Oil prices jumped by USD 20 per barrel on Monday morning, before falling back a bit to add abut USD 10 per barrel, which traders seem to accept as the appropriate geopolitical premium. How will the attack and its consequences bear upon the shipping markets? War risk

Macro data are looking a bit wobbly this week. What will that do to shipping markets? US jobs data for August were released on Friday. A total of 130,000 new jobs were created, which was about 20,000 below expectations. It was still a very positive number, though the Cassandras pointed to the addition of just 3,000 manufacturing jobs. After another round of US tariffs on Chinese exports, fears are growing that we are headed for a global recession. Manufacturing data for Augus

Readers with children will know the feeling. Others will remember the feeling. It’s that mixture of anticipation, pride and excitement tinged with the angostura bitters of anxiety. It’s that back-to-school, first day of term feeling. The economic masters start a new term this September with the school already in special measures and red marks in the margin. Here’s a teacher’s report from the IMF published in April 2019 showing the areas of weakness in the global schoolroom,