Word: oiling
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Once the Wall fell, those chemical factories were among the first casualties of reunification. Investors such as Dow, Dell, French oil giant Total and Belgian chemical and pharmaceutical firm Solvay moved in, enticed in large part by the subsidies Germany was offering to companies willing to take the obsolete mammoths off its hands. But welcome as the newcomers were, they quickly shuttered the old plants and hired only a fraction of the workers - about 20% of those who had previously toiled at Buna and Leuna. Unemployment soared as high as 30%. People started to leave Halle to find work elsewhere...
Eighteen months ago, when the world was awash in asset bubbles, there was perhaps no market more overheated than commodities. Prices of everything from iron ore to palm oil to corn reached dizzying heights. Crude oil nearly quintupled in five years; rice tripled in only five months. World Bank President Robert Zoellick called rising food and oil prices a "man-made catastrophe" that had the potential to quickly erase years of progress in overcoming poverty. Pundits dusted off Malthusian theories that the planet was physically unable to support the burgeoning appetites of an increasingly wealthy global population...
...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...
...over the past several months, the prices of oil, copper, palm oil and others have rallied. This shouldn't be happening given the parlous state of the world economy. The International Monetary Fund in April cut its global growth forecast for 2009, predicting GDP would contract by 1.3%, the most severe recession since the 1930s. Yet oil is some 60% more expensive now than in December. Palm oil, which is used in a wide variety of manufactured foods, has surged more than 50% this year. "The only area of the world economy I know of where the fundamentals are improving...
...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...