Word: demanding
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...What a difference a financial crisis makes. After the worldwide economic boom went bust, demand abruptly evaporated for many commodities. The Dow Jones - AIG commodity price index has shed more than half its value since mid-2008. The most visible turnaround has been in oil. A year ago, Western governments were pleading with Persian Gulf oil states to ramp up production as oil sped toward $150 a barrel; today, OPEC is twisting off the spigot in an attempt to support crude prices around $50. Some experts believe prices may stay depressed for years to come, due to greater energy efficiency...
...reason: demand is recovering, slightly, for some raw materials. In the case of oil, supplies have been reduced by OPEC cutbacks. And commodities traders are bidding up market prices in general on expectations that supply shortages will return with just a modest improvement in demand. That's because miners, farmers and oil drillers, hit by the credit crunch, can't finance investments that would increase their production capacity. Many won't invest today even if they have access to financing because depressed prices make projects uneconomic. The amount of investment in the oil sector, for example, will likely...
...there is every reason to believe that emerging markets such as China and India will continue to be ever more voracious consumers of iron ore, oil and food as their economies get bigger and their citizens richer. Palm-oil prices, for example, have been rising of late partly because demand from India, with its population of 1 billion, is holding up. In March, China imported a record amount of iron ore and coal, while imports of crude oil hit a 12-month high. The binge is being fueled in part by optimism that Beijing's $586 billion stimulus program will...
...course, different types of commodities will react differently as the global economy improves, based on their own specific supply-and-demand conditions. This makes timing a turnaround complicated. Rogers says he expects commodities prices to be among the first to rise, out of all asset classes, when economic growth begins to return. Other experts argue against a rapid rebound, because inventories are high for commodities such as oil, and because demand for natural resources has been so thoroughly squelched in some industries that it may not fully recover any time soon. Francisco Blanch, head of commodities research for Merrill Lynch...
Then an unlikely figure entered the fray: Angela Merkel. German Chancellors don't usually weigh in on church matters, she said. But when the Vatican gave "the impression that it could be possible to deny that the Holocaust happened," she felt compelled to demand that the Pope repudiate the idea, lest it affect relations with "the Jewish people as a whole." In essence, Merkel (a Protestant) was tutoring the German Pope on his responsibilities to the Jews...