Rolling UK Economy Into The Shitbin Thread

$20/barrel - there was a piece somewhere looking at (x) oil producing country and the effect of low prices on its politics - a lot more instability to come!

Saudi is manipulating the price to fuck up everyone else and try to get long term competitor projects canned. It's going to be an economic disaster for Nigeria, Russia, Venezuela, Brazil, etc and potentially the US in the long run. Also makes it less attractive to invest in green energy. Oh no! does not seem far off the mark.

you saying the reason oil is low is because Saudi Arabia is initiating a price war? i don't know much about OPEC

i was under the impression the problem is the underlying weak demand for oil (which sounds good for green energy?), in which case a falling price is good, that's just the new equilibrium price. you hear pundits get this wrong all the time, say shit like "low cost of oil is hurting the global economy"--no, weak global demand created a low cost of oil. cheap inputs are good for the global economy

There was a big OPEC showdown last year where Saudi refused to raise the prices, damaging the economy of the other nations. At the time (and I'm not sure how true this is), it was said they were trying to price fracking companies out of the market (they're only financially viable at around $70 a barrel), but I'm not sure how true this is. I assume it's partly that, plus some falling demand and an attempt to gain market share in China (who tended to buy a lot from Russia).

Demand has fallen in China but Saudi is pumping like crazy to keep the price below ROI rates for marginal ventures. iirc lots of offshore projects need $80+ oil to break even.

tbh, I don't know that much about it either.

xp

A low oil price is a good thing for industries that are bulk buyers of oil, but there are others that are being shafted, in Scotland particularly there are jobs going right across the oil industry, which has a knock on effect on the wider economy.

Is there anything worth reading on what the Saudi endgame is here (and specifically how long they can keep this up for without building up massive deficits?)

the new 'competitive' price is low, other OPEC countries want saudis to sacrifice market share for a high or above-market-share price, letting non-OPEC countries increase their share. saudis aren't really driving the price down so much as not raising it above market value. if they can wait it out and demand goes back up, they've held onto their share

The price has more to do with supply than demand, doesn't it? Demand hasn't absolutely tanked - there's a glut with shale. When shale gets shut down as unsustainable, and supplies are used, the price will go up again irrespective of what happens with supply.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/12/rbs-forecast-doom-global-economy-2016

Follow-up. Consensus seems to be: not as gloomy as RBS. Just bad, sorta flat.

China seems to be tanking: "2% GDP Growth". There always seems to be a lot of fiddling from their end - and maybe most countries do it which is why sentiment and emotion mean something.

Economics = crazy magick.

Economics = people born into enough money to go to school to become professional economists in thrall to / justifying the pronouncements and whims of people born into enough money not to have to work at all

Well, there are economists and there are economists, that's a pretty weird blanket pronouncement to make.

Brexit issues are surely a bigger drag on the economy than anything else right now? By the time the referendum finally happens there will have been four years at least of profound uncertainty about the short-term make-up of the country, taking Scotland into account as well.

Economics = people born into enough money to go to school to become professional economists in thrall to / justifying the pronouncements and whims of people born into enough money not to have to work at all

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, January 13, 2016 6:10 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this may have been sort of true in like, the 80s. not the case anymore

also it doesn't study more to major in economics?

i find it weird that the worst thing happening in the global economy right now is a negative second derivative. like, get back to me when something is actually decreasing

and specifically how long they can keep this up for without building up massive deficits?

on Newsnight the other night I believe they said the Sauds have approx 6-8 more months of cash reserves

also it doesn't study more to major in economics?

i find it weird that the worst thing happening in the global economy right now is a negative second derivative. like, get back to me when something is actually decreasing

― flopson, Wednesday, 13 January 2016 Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The number of jobs that pay a decent wage?

boom

on Newsnight the other night I believe they said the Sauds have approx 6-8 more months of cash reserves

That is... a considerably shorter period of time than I'd been expecting.

on Newsnight the other night I believe they said the Sauds have approx 6-8 more months of cash reserves

iirc it is thought to be five years at $50 a barrel so you could extrapolate from that. Their break-even point is higher than almost everyone else, i think.

They are raising money through different routes, though - hence the mooted Aramco IPO.

The number of jobs that pay a decent wage?

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, January 13, 2016 12:06 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is certainly not the case globally. anyways the rich world has had low median wage growth for decades for mostly well-understood reasons, why would that suddenty cause a global crisis now?

Obviously that was a joke - but your post shows a lack of awareness of what might be happening to people. Talk of a 2nd derivative sounds delusional.

Whatever that is (yes I know I can google)

i find it weird that the worst thing happening in the global economy right now is a negative second derivative. like, get back to me when something is actually decreasing

― flopson, Wednesday, January 13, 2016 10:31 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Stocks-plunge-S-P-500-is-down-10-percent-from-6757200.php

"I find it weird that the worst thing happening is markets down ten percent. get back to me when you're wearing a burlap sack."

i guess that's for the u.s. thread, so here's the 3mo ftse too

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business/market_data/chart?chart_primary_ticker=LSE:UKX&chart_time_period=3_month&canvas_colour=000000&primary_chart_colour=CC0000&use_transparency=0&plot_colour=ffffff&cp_line_colour=1F4F82&margin_left=35&margin_bottom=20&margin_right=20&time_24hr=1&tiny_chart=1&tiny_month_view=1&logo_strength=light&y_axis_left=1&x_axis_plain=1&cp_line=1&cp_line_style=dotline&charting_freq=1_minute&co_dimension%5Ewidth=203&co_dimension%5Eheight=152&small_chart_x_label_format=1&date_label_spacing=30

Bump

http://dvdmedia.ign.com/media/reviews/image/apes_damnyou.jpg

UBS is predicting £350bn wiped off the value of the FTSE today. Anything under £200bn would probably be a success.

but we've £351M a week we don't have to pay to brussels. we could pay that off in, er, 1000 weeks.

The FTSE dropped 531 points (8.something per cent) in the time it took me to walk 200 metres from Charing Cross to my office.

11.4%
https://twitter.com/FT/status/746243856165933056/photo/1?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

i need to book a trip

FAP?

well sure

mi casa et su casa

in casa emergency break ice

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XK9doTm8CH8

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/866946/brexit-latest-updates-ons-data-wipes-490-billion-uk-wealth

Can someone please have a look at this post and thoroughly debunk it (or otherwise)? Pretty please. Yours, an economics idiot

http://forum.charltonlife.com/discussion/comment/2994686/#Comment_2994686

Just looking at Wikipedia, the China-Australia deal took a decade, not 13 months, so that guy’s nuts

And the Walloons held firm against the EU-Canada agreement for a whole... two weeks, just looking at the google news headlines.

The old “throwing out easily disprovable ‘facts’ in a barrage because there’s no referee so just try and prove me wrong” school

guess the old 'we can be like singapore' line is p raving mad too

i dunno, a lot of Tories are into corporal punishment

I feel that in a normal year this type of thing might be bigger news.

BBC News - Interserve rescue plan prompts share collapse
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-46505688

No mention of the half a million+ they paid their CEO in April. But at least the million shares they also gave her are now worth less so that's something?

shit-bin-manufacturing-relocating-to-eire

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/jun/18/we-face-a-global-economic-crisis-and-no-one-knows-what-to-do-about-it

We know that an increase in the cost of borrowing in the UK, the eurozone and the US, which is what we are now witnessing, will do nothing to bring down prices.

Inflation is an affliction caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and to a lesser but important extent by China’s difficulties with Covid after its vaccine development failures, which have caused repeated lockdowns and holdups at ports. In the UK, Brexit adds a further big twist because it has damaged trade and cut the number of available workers.

The justification for higher interest rates, then, must lie elsewhere, and central banks, to justify their spasm of action, argue they must go ahead to avert a wages spiral – one where pay exceeds inflation.

In Britain, this argument presumes that the average worker, to prevent a fall in personal living standards, will be able to negotiate a pay deal that beats the Bank of England’s latest forecast for peak inflation later this year of 11%.

When the government is expected to limit public sector pay rises to between 0% and 3% this year, that means private sector increases would have to be even higher – about 12% or 13% on average. These levels of pay rise are a fiction.

Oof

I literally did not believe this when it was first explained to me, but the UK effectively puts housing prices in the CPI for student loan interest, so anyone with a student loan is levered synthetic short housing as well needing to rent. It's shocking their TFR isn't 0. https://t.co/Z6tkux9mQA

— Quantian (@quantian1) August 3, 2022

this thread is key reading imo:

The Bank of England’s going to increase interest rates today. It may be by 0.25%. It could be by 0.5%. But the question is, why are they choosing to increase the price of money when we already have an inflation problem? A thread to explain…..

— Richard Murphy (@RichardJMurphy) August 4, 2022

it’s almost as if “cooling” (sunak) vs “stimulating” the economy (truss) is too simplistic a way to think about this quite grim challenge of profiteering, war and chronic underinvestment

Bump

negative growth in last 3 months blamed on... the extra bank holiday and not the fuckwittery of the truss government.

Christmas and a world cup in the next quarter though.