Credit deflation and the reflation cycle to come (part 2)

[DurhamBorn]

1 hour ago, Seacrest said:

They were expecting a cash flow deficit for Q2 given gulf of Mexico payments and further severance,  RMM however is $5 higher in Q2 than Q1 that is worth a fag packet calculation of $2b   its only a guess but wont be far off as its rounded down,  and Brent sits at an $8 average for the quarter and way above the $45 needed for the second half  again no volumes are given but BP rule of thumb is another $2b     Its difficult to see how they will not be cash flow positive for the Quarter,  just my musings to see if anyone else had looked    

The $45 includes the divi and capital investment i think,they will be just below $30 for cash break even running costs.

[Loki]

27 minutes ago, DurhamBorn said:

Key to them now if buybacks.They should start heavily in the next quarter.At this share price the 60% for buybacks should include the other 40% so hopefully 100% of excess cash flow to buybacks.The worry is they use the extra 40% for more renewable investment.This quarter should show what they intend.They could pay small special divis on top with some of the extra 40%,but at this point of where the share price is buybacks are better,until there is a £4 in front of the shares.

We should be looking at 6%-8% a year share buybacks,but i have a feeling they will row that down a bit.The big risk is that they get tempted for a big takeover in the green space .

Is there an AGM or shareholders meeting where something like this could be submitted formally?

[Harley]

I enjoyed this MacroVoices podcast number 281 with Darius Dale. 

Erik sees a crack up boom in the equity markets but Darius (also a non-transitory inflationist), based on his data models, sees this in a more nuanced way with waves of inflation interspersed with deflation (at least asset deflation).  He currently sees a mild deflation in assets before a resumption, something I've also been wondering about when looking at the (overbought) charts.  He's looking at a period from say this September through to mid year next year.

The charts are overbought (especially the resource ones) and look to be flagging but then this could just be a mild pullback as surely one definition of a crack up boom would be crazy charts staying in the overbought zones for an uncharacteristically long time.  But I like the idea we have to first work through the current wave of inflation and its base effects with a period of meaningful deceleration of economic activity.

"I personally am very much a secular inflation guy long term. And I'm not smart enough to figure out short term. I think what you're telling me is we just had the first wave of the secular inflation, which I expect to take a full decade to play out, if not more. You're saying it looks like that first wave is ending. But it sounds to me like you're also saying you see the second wave coming, just like I do. Did I get that right?"

But the key point to me was to emphasise nothing will go in a straight line and he at least thinks there may be another chance to load up on our lovelies.  I hope so as I'm continuing to sell down holdings to a third or half (depending on holding) so I'm not totally out but hopefully can buy back better (Yey, "Buy Back Better" from the "Harley Economic Forum"!)

PS:  As I wrote "transitory inflationist" I just knew I was writing bullocks!

 

[Hancock]

2 hours ago, DurhamBorn said:

Key to them now if buybacks.They should start heavily in the next quarter.At this share price the 60% for buybacks should include the other 40% so hopefully 100% of excess cash flow to buybacks.The worry is they use the extra 40% for more renewable investment.This quarter should show what they intend.They could pay small special divis on top with some of the extra 40%,but at this point of where the share price is buybacks are better,until there is a £4 in front of the shares.

We should be looking at 6%-8% a year share buybacks,but i have a feeling they will row that down a bit.The big risk is that they get tempted for a big takeover in the green space .

SO once they start buybacks, is this the time where you see their share price on a upward protectory. 

[planit]

5 hours ago, Seacrest said:

They were expecting a cash flow deficit for Q2 given gulf of Mexico payments and further severance,  RMM however is $5 higher in Q2 than Q1 that is worth a fag packet calculation of $2b   its only a guess but wont be far off as its rounded down,  and Brent sits at an $8 average for the quarter and way above the $45 needed for the second half  again no volumes are given but BP rule of thumb is another $2b     Its difficult to see how they will not be cash flow positive for the Quarter,  just my musings to see if anyone else had looked    

Remember to divide the figures by 4 if you want for the qtr.

I think the added profit for the qtr was $1.2bn when I worked it out. I would be surprised if the added profits weren't enough to make the qtr cash flow positive (BP were expecting cashflow -ve).

I also hope the trading profits will be high again (partly because Shell f**ked up again LOL).

I won't be happy unless they announce $1.5bn in buybacks for the qtr. People are still hoping for divi increase but BP have been clear in saying they don't intend to do that up to 2025.

[planit]

3 hours ago, DurhamBorn said:

Key to them now if buybacks.They should start heavily in the next quarter.At this share price the 60% for buybacks should include the other 40% so hopefully 100% of excess cash flow to buybacks.The worry is they use the extra 40% for more renewable investment.This quarter should show what they intend.They could pay small special divis on top with some of the extra 40%,but at this point of where the share price is buybacks are better,until there is a £4 in front of the shares.

We should be looking at 6%-8% a year share buybacks,but i have a feeling they will row that down a bit.The big risk is that they get tempted for a big takeover in the green space .

That is what I want, 6-8% buybacks plus the divi giving 10%+ per year. But like you I feel they will dial it back once they see the size of the figures. This has come way more quickly than they thought when they formed the plan. The debt target was hit a year early.

A green acquisition at this stage wouldn't be bad, it will help go towards reducing the fossil fuel percentage of output. In a couple of years other oilies could be desperately trying to get their hands on renewable production to hit the stupid court mandates. That will mean their investment will double in price.

The ESG mob are so blinded that they can't see the oilies becoming the biggest suppliers of renewable energy. They will be so pissed (even though they are the ones demanding this to happen).

[planit]

1 hour ago, Hancock said:

SO once they start buybacks, is this the time where you see their share price on a upward protectory. 

There is a proverb -

An oilies' share price can dig deeper and for longer than you can stay solvent!

 

For example, the government could make it illegal for pensions to own fossil fuel companies. Or for 80% of profits to be distributed to the public for 'damage caused'.

[Hancock]

11 minutes ago, planit said:

For example, the government could make it illegal for pensions to own fossil fuel companies. Or for 80% of profits to be distributed to the public for 'damage caused'.

The most extreme thing to have happened to a major that i can recollect is Obama and his screwing over of BP.

What you state would result in sky high oil prices as they'd stop investing..

[sancho panza]

11 hours ago, Mapper said:

Is my basic maths right, that is a fatality rate of 1%?

And that is in India, which you would imagine doesn't have the best healthcare system. AND I guess a lot of the deaths were older people.

Is 1% high?

EDIT:

https://www.goodrx.com/blog/flu-vs-coronavirus-mortality-and-death-rates-by-year/

Says Flu in the US had a fatality rate of 0.1%, so 10x higher.

The above page says COVID fatality rate in the US is 3.6%. Why is it so much higher than India?

On March 17 2020 Prof John Ioannidis wrote the following piece,effectievly arguing that the disaster was in the data they were using for the inital infection fatality rate

He bascially argued for a 0.3% IFR based on a rough estimate for the Diamond Princess cruise ship a long way from the 3.4% inital WHO IFR estimate.(and the one instrumental in bringing in lockdowns).Read the rest of the first piece and you'll see why he earned his pre eminence in his profession because a year and a bit later,he looks to have been pretty well on the money about a raft of things as well the IFR

The second paper is one published by the WHO that Prof Ioannidis updates his estimate for the IFR but with obviously much more data,published after being peer reviewed and updated Sept 13th 2020.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.

The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300.

This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless.

Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%).

Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people. However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter.

If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths.

One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.

In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The vast majority of this hecatomb would be people with limited life expectancies. That’s in contrast to 1918, when many young people died.

One can only hope that, much like in 1918, life will continue. Conversely, with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.

If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe.

John P.A. Ioannidis is professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine, professor by courtesy of statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) at Stanford University

 

 

 

 

Prof John Ioannidis,Sep 13th 2020.Allowing for sampling errors IFR estimate at 0.2%

https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

[Seacrest]

Share price pretty much sits where it did at the start of the  2 week run up to the last set of quarterly results.     

[sancho panza]

5 hours ago, Hancock said:

Was it to do with nightclubs being open, and it actually being more likely a person will die or get a life changing injury in a drunken fight, than from "the virus"!

 and @wherebee

Staff are not wanting the overtime mainly for stress reasons as I understand it.

Currently,we're receiving 50% more calls than the busiest New Years Eve pre covid.Normally for NYE,we'll ahve extra crews on.

BackgroundWe have four categories of job,1 to 4.1 being life threatening,4 being a medical minor or hospital transfer.

In normal times,I'd take a patient into Resus maybe once every two shifts,maybe less-these are patients with acute life threatening issues.Everyone else either stays home or goes to normal A&E.

Currently,we're going to Resus two times a shift(3 the other night).Maybe we're unlucky but with less crews on,it stands to reason.These Cat 1 jobs can be very stressful as people can be near death or sometimes-very rarely thankfully-pass away on the vehicle during transport.Sustaining a pt who's on the edge of life itself,can be very stressful.

In between these jobs we're going to patients who have sometimes been waiting fiven to ten hours or more for us, and where the patient may have been on the floor for the whole ten hours.

It goes without saying really,that if people are waiting 5-10 hours for a response,by the time we get there ,their condition can often have worsened considerably.I went to a patient the other night who had three chronic issues ongoing anyone of which would have justified me ringing Resus and alerting him in-three.Not just one.

One shift last week,we were outside a care home about to alert a pt to Resus and there's a tap at the door and one of the patients in the care home has collapsed.I ditch my crew mate,go in and end up calling for back up crews to get this pt on a strecther and then alerted into Resus.The Dr at the hospital at the hospital was a bit teed off about the poor quality of my hand over but I pointed out that we'd got two pts in there and I was on my own.40 minutes later said Doctor still couldn't work out what was going on with the pt.

It's not jsut amublance staff getting frazzled but A&E staff are getting it even worse than us.

So that's the snapshot of my worklife at the minute.Hope it explains why people choose to stay home rather than pay 40% tax on their overtime payments-again credit to the thread and @DurhamBornin particular for running this theme.It's coming true.People are genuinely chinning off the overtime to avoid the stress.

Young people getting smashed and enjoying life I'm really happy to see

[arrow]

1 hour ago, planit said:

There is a proverb -

An oilies' share price can dig deeper and for longer than you can stay solvent!

 

For example, the government could make it illegal for pensions to own fossil fuel companies. Or for 80% of profits to be distributed to the public for 'damage caused'.

If you believe in one of the themes of this thread. Low prices mean you should be able to buy across the sector, choosing good dividend yields and reasonable balance sheeets.  If prices drop lower, then top up. Just keep a %cash in your account.

Pension funds are divesting from fossil fuels, one factor causing lower share prices. If it was illegal here or in the west, then China and Russia would declare a national holiday and celebrate by buying up the western oil/gas companies.

If 80% of profits were taken, the share prices would collapse and then Russia and China would...as above.

Meanwhile our societies, which are based on this cheap energy would collapse. It would be time to learn to speak Russian and Chinese for our new overlords.

[arrow]

1 hour ago, sancho panza said:

On March 17 2020 Prof John Ioannidis wrote the following piece,effectievly arguing that the disaster was in the data they were using for the inital infection fatality rate

He bascially argued for a 0.3% IFR based on a rough estimate for the Diamond Princess cruise ship a long way from the 3.4% inital WHO IFR estimate.(and the one instrumental in bringing in lockdowns).Read the rest of the first piece and you'll see why he earned his pre eminence in his profession because a year and a bit later,he looks to have been pretty well on the money about a raft of things as well the IFR

The second paper is one published by the WHO that Prof Ioannidis updates his estimate for the IFR but with obviously much more data,published after being peer reviewed and updated Sept 13th 2020.

https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/

The current coronavirus disease, Covid-19, has been called a once-in-a-century pandemic. But it may also be a once-in-a-century evidence fiasco.

The data collected so far on how many people are infected and how the epidemic is evolving are utterly unreliable. Given the limited testing to date, some deaths and probably the vast majority of infections due to SARS-CoV-2 are being missed. We don’t know if we are failing to capture infections by a factor of three or 300.

This evidence fiasco creates tremendous uncertainty about the risk of dying from Covid-19. Reported case fatality rates, like the official 3.4% rate from the World Health Organization, cause horror — and are meaningless.

Projecting the Diamond Princess mortality rate onto the age structure of the U.S. population, the death rate among people infected with Covid-19 would be 0.125%. But since this estimate is based on extremely thin data — there were just seven deaths among the 700 infected passengers and crew — the real death rate could stretch from five times lower (0.025%) to five times higher (0.625%).

Could the Covid-19 case fatality rate be that low? No, some say, pointing to the high rate in elderly people. However, even some so-called mild or common-cold-type coronaviruses that have been known for decades can have case fatality rates as high as 8% when they infect elderly people in nursing homes. In fact, such “mild” coronaviruses infect tens of millions of people every year, and account for 3% to 11% of those hospitalized in the U.S. with lower respiratory infections each winter.

If we assume that case fatality rate among individuals infected by SARS-CoV-2 is 0.3% in the general population — a mid-range guess from my Diamond Princess analysis — and that 1% of the U.S. population gets infected (about 3.3 million people), this would translate to about 10,000 deaths.

One of the bottom lines is that we don’t know how long social distancing measures and lockdowns can be maintained without major consequences to the economy, society, and mental health. Unpredictable evolutions may ensue, including financial crisis, unrest, civil strife, war, and a meltdown of the social fabric. At a minimum, we need unbiased prevalence and incidence data for the evolving infectious load to guide decision-making.

In the most pessimistic scenario, which I do not espouse, if the new coronavirus infects 60% of the global population and 1% of the infected people die, that will translate into more than 40 million deaths globally, matching the 1918 influenza pandemic.

The vast majority of this hecatomb would be people with limited life expectancies. That’s in contrast to 1918, when many young people died.

One can only hope that, much like in 1918, life will continue. Conversely, with lockdowns of months, if not years, life largely stops, short-term and long-term consequences are entirely unknown, and billions, not just millions, of lives may be eventually at stake.

If we decide to jump off the cliff, we need some data to inform us about the rationale of such an action and the chances of landing somewhere safe.

John P.A. Ioannidis is professor of medicine and professor of epidemiology and population health, as well as professor by courtesy of biomedical data science at Stanford University School of Medicine, professor by courtesy of statistics at Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences, and co-director of the Meta-Research Innovation Center at Stanford (METRICS) at Stanford University

 

 

 

 

Prof John Ioannidis,Sep 13th 2020.Allowing for sampling errors IFR estimate at 0.2%

https://www.who.int/bulletin/online_first/BLT.20.265892.pdf

Unfortunately, although science should be about questioning theories and data, it's become politicised around covid. Before covid, Ioannidis was rightly respected given his knowledge, experience and published reaserch. But, after his papers on covid, he has been attacked by the msm and other scientists, called a right-wing apologist, corrupt and incompetent. Fortunately, he has been supported by some of his peers. When covid fades into history, many years away, people can't complain they weren't warned about these horrendous mistakes and actions.

[Democorruptcy]

On 22/07/2021 at 10:53, Starsend said:

I've been looking at the best ways to get exposure to natural gas, don't really trust the ETFs available like the Wisdom Tree one and it would be nice to receive dividends while waiting. BHP are apparently a major player in the gas arena and I like them for their huge copper exposure as well. Also Phillips 66, not seen them mentioned on this thread - pay a 5%+ divi at the moment as well.

2019 article about investing in gas stocks:

https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/12/15/how-to-invest-in-gas-stocks.aspx

[DurhamBorn]

@sancho panza its funny you mention falls,because thats what half the calls my partner responds to are.Its when they press their button etc.Usually two respond to a fall because one really struggles to do it well,and not at all for obese people.They are so short staffed they have been sending them on their own for falls.One woman,very very experienced 61 years old pulled her back,but carried on working.Next shift the supervisor phoned her 3 times while she was heading to her list of calls to divert to others.Her attitude was so bad towards her she told her to forget it,she was coming back to the depot then going home,and she did.Shes now on the sick,and i doubt will return,shel do 6 months paid sick and leave.

Another woman who was semi skilled phoned in sick she same day,and i doubt she will be back.One younger girl packed in after she had a baby and is only doing 16 hours with a local care firm now,she gets the same money on welfare.The bosses are all working from home and are getting their big salaries for nothing.They are close to retiring though and dont care.The service is close to collapse.My partner stays to build up final salary pension and because the 3 x 12 hour shifts a week suit us as with me not working now we can enjoy the days shes off,but if it gets much worse she will go on the sick herself

Jumping into factories,almost every lower paid one around me are wanting people but cant get anyone decent.The youngsters drop shifts all the time,dont turn in,miss night shifts etc.One that supplies Nissan etc wants 50 production ops,but cant get them.Its £11 an hour,but they can get that at Amazon and now be filthy,and lots of nice women to chat up.

The coast was full yesterday of people obvious on benefits,you women,probably never worked etc.

The government are in for a massive shock.They think they can print instead of tax,but that is going to be removed soon,unless they force the BOE.

There is simply not enough reward for work,and worse not enough difference between working and a single mother with two kids on welfare.Furlough etc has opened peoples eyes to how much they are giving up of their life for little or no reward.

[JMD]

14 hours ago, sancho panza said:

They have been lucky to have been able to give the appearance of having the ability to be authoritarian although that's more to do with the compliancy of the geneal population than police numbers.

Speak to any policeman who works the city streets of the UK outside London and they'll explain that it's more illusion than anything else and that the blue line is thinner than it's ever been.

I think the memory that stays with me the msot from the last year was the police in Bristol who arrested a preacher for giving soup to the homeless on the grounds he had breached corona regs.

Does the 'thin blue line' metaphor even still have validity? Didn't all police forces have a parmilitary makeover - to black - years ago? Not making a cheap point here, I predict/fear an ever creeping pivot toward American style policing over here (or European style for that matter).                                                                                                            Robert Peel, and his 'citizen constabulary' model, would be spinning in his grave. Read the originating 3 core ideas of policing, which today sound almost quaint, but in reality might help underline how broken today's society has become!?...  I accept law and order is complex and that there are many new driving causes, but we all know that building on foundations of sand always ends in epic fail.                                      https://lawenforcementactionpartnership.org/peel-policing-principles/

[Harley]

1 hour ago, sancho panza said:

 and @wherebee

Staff are not wanting the overtime mainly for stress reasons as I understand it.

Currently,we're receiving 50% more calls than the busiest New Years Eve pre covid.Normally for NYE,we'll ahve extra crews on.

BackgroundWe have four categories of job,1 to 4.1 being life threatening,4 being a medical minor or hospital transfer.

In normal times,I'd take a patient into Resus maybe once every two shifts,maybe less-these are patients with acute life threatening issues.Everyone else either stays home or goes to normal A&E.

Currently,we're going to Resus two times a shift(3 the other night).Maybe we're unlucky but with less crews on,it stands to reason.These Cat 1 jobs can be very stressful as people can be near death or sometimes-very rarely thankfully-pass away on the vehicle during transport.Sustaining a pt who's on the edge of life itself,can be very stressful.

In between these jobs we're going to patients who have sometimes been waiting fiven to ten hours or more for us, and where the patient may have been on the floor for the whole ten hours.

It goes without saying really,that if people are waiting 5-10 hours for a response,by the time we get there ,their condition can often have worsened considerably.I went to a patient the other night who had three chronic issues ongoing anyone of which would have justified me ringing Resus and alerting him in-three.Not just one.

One shift last week,we were outside a care home about to alert a pt to Resus and there's a tap at the door and one of the patients in the care home has collapsed.I ditch my crew mate,go in and end up calling for back up crews to get this pt on a strecther and then alerted into Resus.The Dr at the hospital at the hospital was a bit teed off about the poor quality of my hand over but I pointed out that we'd got two pts in there and I was on my own.40 minutes later said Doctor still couldn't work out what was going on with the pt.

It's not jsut amublance staff getting frazzled but A&E staff are getting it even worse than us.

So that's the snapshot of my worklife at the minute.Hope it explains why people choose to stay home rather than pay 40% tax on their overtime payments-again credit to the thread and @DurhamBornin particular for running this theme.It's coming true.People are genuinely chinning off the overtime to avoid the stress.

Young people getting smashed and enjoying life I'm really happy to see

I feel good knowing there are real people out there doing real stuff like this.  Ex-military and now this, you've done us proud me son!  May all your trades expire well in the money.  

[JMD]

7 hours ago, feed said:

I grew up in Rotherham and although my grandfather had retired from mining, i still remember the police 
beating the shit out of the miners.  The miners didn't have the public on side and the police were lumps back then.

I don't think todays police would stand a chance in a similar long running conflict.  But i don't know if there is anything remaining that could align a group of working class men the same way today.  
 

Perhaps all future new police intake will need to be equity driven, armed social workers!! I think that's the kind of year-zero, confused chaotic 'best of both' liberal mindset ideal that we are heading toward. 

[JMD]

7 hours ago, SpectrumFX said:

It's the first rule of running a corrupt regime. The allocation of scarce resource based on political whim and favour.

Also allows government to present themselves as politically virtuous and compassionate human beings. Any opposition groups can then be easily brushed aside (or worse) as regressive/right wing/hatefull types who are merely poisoning the well for the majority.                                                            ...As other posts have ruefully commented here over last few days, not something I would have believed possible happening here in the UK, but last year's contrived and crude Covid response changed everything for me.

[Harley]

47 minutes ago, JMD said:

Perhaps all future new police intake will need to be equity driven, armed social workers!! I think that's the kind of year-zero, confused chaotic 'best of both' liberal mindset ideal that we are heading toward. 

Guy on the radio (ex-Copper against some police practices like logging stuff against you) was saying something like how it seems they don't want a smart force, just compliant folk to do their bidding.  Turning moment stuff everywhere these days.

[Harley]

1 hour ago, DurhamBorn said:

There is simply not enough reward for work,and worse not enough difference between working and a single mother with two kids on welfare.Furlough etc has opened peoples eyes to how much they are giving up of their life for little or no reward.

I had a low level (thanks to my sense of self preservation) encounter this week which made me realise it's not just about the money but that they've produced an zombie underclass with no social skills, awareness, sense of self preservation, etc.  A group of soap, X-factor and social media obsessives (that being their "world") which could/are causing me great harm with their vote and gullibility against the agendas of the polos and their sort.  A harmful waste for them and me.   We do need to factor in such societal cracks into our work. 

Talking of which I see Mr Napier (as a help in this process rather than as one of "them"!) is guest in a recent MoneyWeek podcast!

https://moneyweek.com/russell-napier-podcast

Also one that may also be of relevance:

https://moneyweek.com/economy/603537/niall-ferguson-why-well-never-be-prepared-for-disaster

Actually, a fair few with the "watch out" theme!

[planit]

2 hours ago, arrow said:

If you believe in one of the themes of this thread. Low prices mean you should be able to buy across the sector, choosing good dividend yields and reasonable balance sheeets.  If prices drop lower, then top up. Just keep a %cash in your account.

Pension funds are divesting from fossil fuels, one factor causing lower share prices. If it was illegal here or in the west, then China and Russia would declare a national holiday and celebrate by buying up the western oil/gas companies.

If 80% of profits were taken, the share prices would collapse and then Russia and China would...as above.

Meanwhile our societies, which are based on this cheap energy would collapse. It would be time to learn to speak Russian and Chinese for our new overlords.

I was being facetious and exaggerating but if you haven't noticed, what you explain is actually happening in slow motion as we speak.

[JMD]

29 minutes ago, Harley said:

Guy on the radio (ex-Copper against some police practices like logging stuff against you) was saying something like how it seems they don't want a smart force, just compliant folk to do their bidding.  Turning moment stuff everywhere these days.

Also I accept that policing in a multi cultural society is a difficult thing, might not even be possible? Ie have people here seen the ch5 'Bailiff's...' show, can't remember it's full title... - NOT the BBC version of this genre which is very filtered, whereas the ch5 version illuminately shows the 'different communities' reactions to authority more accurately (and an insight into what police experience I bet). Full of 'dodgy communities', seemingly very prone to intimidation and violence, would be my summation - all very depressing really. However the liberal mind set bunch would simply reject my statements and accuse me of rasicm no dought. 

[MrXxxx]

11 hours ago, StrugglingMillennial said:

I looks like the transition to the chinese model is about to begin.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9820061/Families-discounts-free-tickets-government-backed-rewards-scheme.html

Get ready for your digital yuan everyone!

Why not reduce VAT on fruit and veg, and make local authority leisure/sports centres free of charge.......oh no, letsake it twice as complicated so their `friends` in Capita and Serco can `milk` the tax payer!

[Bobthebuilder]

5 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

Why not reduce VAT on fruit and veg

Zero VAT on raw foodstuffs already.

I have decided to remove myself from work and "society" for the time being. Everyone has gone mad.