Economy crash =/= stock market crash?

rothers

Markets down again today, anyone got a crystal ball who can tell me when the bottom is please? I want to top up! 🤣 

tebbins

wmb194 said:

[Deleted User] said:

wmb194 said:

[Deleted User] said:

wmb194 said:

[Deleted User] said:

I don't know if it is the media trying to whip up fear, but the drums seem to be beating that it's going to be a winter of discontent. 

Electricity and gas shortages, blackouts, inflation, shortage of workers and food. Possible three days weeks. I have moved another 5% of my assets into gold and silver. And will be holding a couple of thousand in cash. Not at the stage of storing tinned food.......yet! Crypto I have but not much use currently. 

My biggest concert is the price of electricity and gas. Not so much the consumer side of things, but the impact it will have on industry. The company that produced 60% of the UKs C02 has already closed down due to gas costs until they can make the factory be sustainable. They are currently speaking to the gov.

In addition I understand May ordered a "rough" oil/gas storage facility to be closed in her time in power, as a result the UK has very little reserves. I won't pretend to understand what this facility does, but the media quote an adviser claiming it is bad. 

Anyway all this equals reasons I want to have alternative wealth at hand. Just in case. 

Owned by Centrica, Rough was a gas field that was turned to storage. When I was growing up it was often mentioned in the news. I seriously doubt "May" or the government ordered it closed; my recollection is that it kept springing leaks and it became much too difficult to keep it operating.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-storage-prices-rough-british-gas-centrica

From my understanding, they (GOV) had to OK it being closed. They were advised not to do this yet. The Gov OK'd it

And they did not build a new one because it was not economical. In other words no profit could be made.

I don't know but it's irrelevant. You cannot force private companies to things at a loss* and it was clearly end-of-life.

*Not for long, anyway, as it's discovering this week with its energy price caps.

I can see them all being nationalised like the railways if it gets bad. Key elements of our infrastructure should really not be owned by private companies. The two plants which produce carbon gas 60% of it, that is used heavily, one of them is owned by the Americans. When will the gov learn they need to own it all and invest in it. 

I completely disagree. That didn't work before - just ask your grandparents - and there's no reason to believe it'll work next time. Given that they can legislate, incentivise and regulate governments / countries don't need to own things. We'll muddle through, these things happen from time to time and the current issues also aren't unique to Britain at the moment.

I couldn't disagree more. It's privatisation that hasn't, and can't work to run infrastructure. It's been a comprehensive failure in public transport, now mostly owned by foreign governments taking British government subsidies in excess of the old British Rail's central government budget (in real terms) with literally no possibility of innovation. National infrastructure needs to be state-owned and operated, private interests have zero incentive to national security. The nationalisation and standardisation of the National Grid, oil and gas pipelines, rail, roads, education, healthcare, housing etc from the 30s onwards became the foundation of the growth and prosperity seen in the post-war era. It's rare to see an exception, such as Japanese rail, work.

sevenhills

rothers said:

Markets down again today, anyone got a crystal ball who can tell me when the bottom is please? I want to top up! 🤣 

It seems that when the market goes down, my shares that are struggling(such as Esken Limited) go up.

Looks like the downturn has stopped now, buy as many Esken as you like 

As far as energy goes, we had not for profit Yorkshire Energy, they went bust in Dec 2020, costing local councils lots of money.

wmb194

tebbins said:

wmb194 said:

Deleted_User said:

wmb194 said:

Deleted_User said:

wmb194 said:

Deleted_User said:

I don't know if it is the media trying to whip up fear, but the drums seem to be beating that it's going to be a winter of discontent. 

Electricity and gas shortages, blackouts, inflation, shortage of workers and food. Possible three days weeks. I have moved another 5% of my assets into gold and silver. And will be holding a couple of thousand in cash. Not at the stage of storing tinned food.......yet! Crypto I have but not much use currently. 

My biggest concert is the price of electricity and gas. Not so much the consumer side of things, but the impact it will have on industry. The company that produced 60% of the UKs C02 has already closed down due to gas costs until they can make the factory be sustainable. They are currently speaking to the gov.

In addition I understand May ordered a "rough" oil/gas storage facility to be closed in her time in power, as a result the UK has very little reserves. I won't pretend to understand what this facility does, but the media quote an adviser claiming it is bad. 

Anyway all this equals reasons I want to have alternative wealth at hand. Just in case. 

Owned by Centrica, Rough was a gas field that was turned to storage. When I was growing up it was often mentioned in the news. I seriously doubt "May" or the government ordered it closed; my recollection is that it kept springing leaks and it became much too difficult to keep it operating.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/20/uk-gas-storage-prices-rough-british-gas-centrica

From my understanding, they (GOV) had to OK it being closed. They were advised not to do this yet. The Gov OK'd it

And they did not build a new one because it was not economical. In other words no profit could be made.

I don't know but it's irrelevant. You cannot force private companies to things at a loss* and it was clearly end-of-life.

*Not for long, anyway, as it's discovering this week with its energy price caps.

I can see them all being nationalised like the railways if it gets bad. Key elements of our infrastructure should really not be owned by private companies. The two plants which produce carbon gas 60% of it, that is used heavily, one of them is owned by the Americans. When will the gov learn they need to own it all and invest in it. 

I completely disagree. That didn't work before - just ask your grandparents - and there's no reason to believe it'll work next time. Given that they can legislate, incentivise and regulate governments / countries don't need to own things. We'll muddle through, these things happen from time to time and the current issues also aren't unique to Britain at the moment.

I couldn't disagree more. It's privatisation that hasn't, and can't work to run infrastructure. It's been a comprehensive failure in public transport, now mostly owned by foreign governments taking British government subsidies in excess of the old British Rail's central government budget (in real terms) with literally no possibility of innovation. National infrastructure needs to be state-owned and operated, private interests have zero incentive to national security. The nationalisation and standardisation of the National Grid, oil and gas pipelines, rail, roads, education, healthcare, housing etc from the 30s onwards became the foundation of the growth and prosperity seen in the post-war era. It's rare to see an exception, such as Japanese rail, work.

Like I said before, the government doesn't have to own things in order to achieve things. In my experience the railways improved a lot after privatisation* so it wasn't a comprehensive failure by any means - for instance, don't you remember all of the new rolling stock and they began to run far closer to being on time? - and remember they weren't even built by the government originally, but by private investment. BR was abysmal. Railways aren't cheap to run and the government has never allowed the market to work anyway e.g., it retained control of pricing for key parts of the day and wouldn't allow them to increase too far. So what if foreign companies own/run things? They often bring investment and expertise and add to the competitive environment. It's not as if you can pack a railway into an overhead bin and fly it home.

*The correct term should probably really be franchised. They were never really fully privatised. The government could let them lapse and begin to run them again itself if it wished (but it doesn't). It still owns the track.

tebbins

The fact most franchises have ended up in foreign government ownership proves privatisation has been bad value for money for the UK taxpayer. If state ownership is so bad, why do other European governments own UK rail?

Current UK rail is worse and more expensive than most of the systems in countries that own UK rail franchises.
Subsidies now exceed BRs budget, and, obviously, there is no competition. The barriers to entry are extremely high, there are no incentives to provide anything more than the bare minimum service.
I don't see this as a debate about socialism vs capitalism, just a series of facts demonstrating what a failure privatised rail has been.
Imagine if roads and cars were privatised with little to no national involvement - no standard road signs, no highway code, no standard car layout, no standard road quality, no standard drive on the left/right, no national emergency number, no standard registration number system, no standard national driving test (I can keep going).
George Orwell was talking about this as early as The Road to Wigan Pier.
Privatised rail is a means of value extraction, not of wealth creation.

Thrugelmir

rothers said:

Markets down again today, anyone got a crystal ball who can tell me when the bottom is please? I want to top up! 🤣 

Realisation that the economic issues created by the pandemic are far from resolved is yet to register. All thoese retail investors that thought that making money was easy will  be stampeding for the exits before Xmas though.  

wmb194

tebbins said:

The fact most franchises have ended up in foreign government ownership proves privatisation has been bad value for money for the UK taxpayer. If state ownership is so bad, why do other European governments own UK rail?

Current UK rail is worse and more expensive than most of the systems in countries that own UK rail franchises.
Subsidies now exceed BRs budget, and, obviously, there is no competition. The barriers to entry are extremely high, there are no incentives to provide anything more than the bare minimum service.
I don't see this as a debate about socialism vs capitalism, just a series of facts demonstrating what a failure privatised rail has been.
Imagine if roads and cars were privatised with little to no national involvement - no standard road signs, no highway code, no standard car layout, no standard road quality, no standard drive on the left/right, no national emergency number, no standard registration number system, no standard national driving test (I can keep going).
George Orwell was talking about this as early as The Road to Wigan Pier.
Privatised rail is a means of value extraction, not of wealth creation.

Doesn't prove anything. BR was rubbish so comparing what subsidies are paid now is irrelevant - clearly more should have been spent back then - and anyway, aren't there far more trains running today? This is all within living memory, btw. 

You're becoming silly and we weren't talking about roads. Anyway, laws can determine layouts, signage, number plate formats, even tolls etc. In the stagecoach era turnpikes (toll roads) were very common. They disappeared with the rise of the railway and general taxation took over to pay for their maintenance.
There are no magic bullets and across the world governments have proven time and time again that they're terrible at running businesses. They are bad at directing investment and they always become political footballs, particularly when unions take their grip.
If I don't respond again on this topic it's because I find retreading this subject tedious - it always comes up when people begin to forget how bad things used to be.

tebbins

Suggesting the current rail franchise system is working or better is what's silly. I used roads as an example of what happens without state involvement in infrastructure and rather than engage you dismissed my point out of hand. I have nothing more to add to this, I am talking facts, you are talking theory.

If governments are terrible at running businesses, why are European state owned public transport systems cheaper and better than UK franchises?
That said, I don't disagree in respect of the current government's incompetence.
Unions promote job security and counter the imbalance of power between employees and management. In an advanced, service economy, human capital is the most necessary and valuable kind. Anarcho-libertarian thinking about squeezing and extracting value does not work.

sevenhills

tebbins said:

If governments are terrible at running businesses, why are European state owned public transport systems cheaper and better than UK franchises?

Germany and France subsidy to their rail networks is 3x ours.

tebbins

sevenhills said:

tebbins said:

If governments are terrible at running businesses, why are European state owned public transport systems cheaper and better than UK franchises?

Germany and France subsidy to their rail networks is 3x ours.

In return for cheaper, better service.