Credit deflation and the reflation cycle to come (part 3)

[Axeman123]

2 hours ago, jamtomorrow said:

In the meantime, this might start to do weird things with wage inflation. You can see how the wages for jobs that can be automated today are going to end up capped by the cost of capital if it's just a case of picking up the phone to your friendly PAYG robotics company, especially if the employer is already being lightly roasted by labour shortages.

That is really interesting.

Surely though that will only affect jobs which can be fully substituted by robotics, ie the absolute bottom rung. Even staff stacking shelves in a supermarket while it is open can show a customer where the coffee is, or get something down from a high shelf etc. People at the bottom are going to have to add value beyond surly jobsworthism, even if it is just a smile. No one should be doing a job that could be done by a robot anyway, it would be a terrible way to live.

An interesting thought experiment: what if covid measures were just preparing us for a robotic supermarket? Masks and perspex screening at the tills to lower social interaction to ease the transition to removing the human interaction. Following lanes and marks on the floor to get us ready to obey, in readiness to shop in proximity to potentially deadly robots. Enforced 2m distance in queues to make it more predictable for an AI.

1 hour ago, Lightscribe said:

Nope can’t see it happening.

Doesn’t matter if the January rise comes now or in March. It’s coming regardless, inflation is everywhere for everyone to see and sentiment is key. Covid ending and the economy resuming will only lay bare the economic aftermath in plain sight.

The only thing that can save it now is the Fed coming to the rescue with more QE.

The expectation of the crash of the super bubble is now all over the media which may well lead to self-fulfilling prophecy. The general masses don’t know that includes their house prices yet.

I think we are very near ladies and gentlemen. The magnus kahuna could well be on the way.

The bolded part isn't where I would expect sentiment to be a few % off ATHs after the final peak. Just a few weeks ago the sentiment was incredibly bullish, it wouldn't take much to flip it back.

If the fed simply restates its plan to taper til March, and then consider a first .25% raise (perhaps with some hints it may not go ahead) I think we are on for a very sharp move up.

Don't get me wrong, it won't last long or change what comes straight after. 

[Innkeeper]

14 minutes ago, Lightscribe said:

Yes they’ll be skeleton staff at first but digital ID solves all of that eventually. Tesco will know who the people are in their store via biometrics.

In a UBI/social credit score future that will be automatically deducted/penalised accordingly. 

Lost kids, will be alerted and tracked on parents/authorities digital devices etc.

Most new mobile phones now have NPUs (neural processing unit) embedded in their chipsets. Peoples phones will be working providing information (such as facial ID and location tracking of people in the background when the user is oblivious taking a picture etc) to the wider network together with AI learning without them having a clue.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_learning_processor

I don’t doubt these things will be possible but currently the more invasive elements of a mobile phone eg Bluetooth, location services etc can be switched off by the user.  Not having that capability implies a Chinese style level of surveillance.  It’s possible in the future that a majority even in the UK will demand permanent surveillance ‘for their safety’.  The level of enthusiasm for the track and trace system (it’s capabilities rather than its actual results) is a worrying warning....

[wherebee]

21 minutes ago, CannonFodder said:

I tailgate into my client.s offices all the time, its a guilty pleasure of mine.

1. It amuses me to see how easy it is, its very easy

2. I cant be faffed with signing in and then waiting while they try and find my host who.s likely in another meeting. Sometimes this can take 20 minutes and i.ld rather be working at a desk or meeting room table.

I do this too!

 

All the time.  I never miss a chance to say 'got in here without a pass again, Bob.  How's that security company of your's doing again?"

shit stirrer?  me?

[DurhamBorn]

1 hour ago, Ash4781b said:

As expected there’s early outrage on forums regarding the telecoms utility inflation busting contracts out there with consumers. I’ve got one myself but those are the terms and pretty much common across sector. We’ll see if the media push it or someone like Martin Lewis gets involved. The gov’ will not want to highlight itself setting up rise in National insurance. Finance industry is quiet as in all the financial models i understood lenders should be raising their prices too to get in on the party!

Regulator gave BT inflation+ increases when they thought the BOE told the truth  Everyone in telcos follows the backbone network incumbents.BT would just go to court and win.Telco contracts are cheap,i think government will be looking elsewhere.Lewis is a twat,he spends his life trying to get shirkers bennies paid from tax and NI of young white men working in warehouses on low wages.Just another woke warrior bankrupting the currency.

[AlfredTheLittle]

1 hour ago, Innkeeper said:

I’ve come to the view that supermarkets seem disinterested in shoplifting (and theft via self service tills) and must view it as a price of doing business.   Receipts for your purchases are now only given on request so how the security guy is meant to know whether you’ve paid, I don’t know.  

Just like the banks and £100 contactless.  They know they’ll have to pay back millions on stolen card purchases but they must see that as worthwhile to prise us away from using cash.

I think this has actually stemmed from the police. If the police refuse to even attend, let alone prosecute, shoplifting, then there's not a lot the supermarkets can do. 

I see this as part of the general breakdown of public services, which are sucking more and more out and giving less and less in return. People will respond by opting out so we become more like an old southern European economy with high tax rates, low productivity, and nothing functioning.

[Axeman123]

9 minutes ago, DurhamBorn said:

Lewis is a twat,he spends his life trying to get shirkers bennies paid from tax and NI of young white men working in warehouses on low wages.Just another woke warrior bankrupting the currency.

100%. He got lucky when the government used PPI refunds as helicopter money IMO, and he was able to claim some credit to launch his brand. He has never managed to repeat that trick.

Do you think the political threat of windfall taxes will drive telecoms towards network investment/buy-backs/paying off debt instead of paying dividends this cycle? Could paying large dividends be seen as a risk, perhaps leading to a shift towards a US mindset?

[arrow]

On 20/01/2022 at 19:25, Froggy2000 said:

 

My grandmother passed away a few years ago and left a large inheritance (London property from x3 to x30 salary).  My mother has spent half of it "doing up the house" including several thousand pounds on taps for the second bathroom.  My father keeps the rest in bank accounts where it just sits there getting inflated away.

Big mistake by your grandmother. Understandable if she had dementia. But still. She should've looked at her kids and grandkids lives, seen that her grandkids needed the money and her kids didn't. Then made her will so that her money skipped a generation. 

[CannonFodder]

8 minutes ago, Axeman123 said:

100%. He got lucky when the government used PPI refunds as helicopter money IMO, and he was able to claim some credit to launch his brand. He has never managed to repeat that trick.

Do you think the political threat of windfall taxes will drive telecoms towards network investment/buy-backs/paying off debt instead of paying dividends this cycle? Could paying large dividends be seen as a risk, perhaps leading to a shift towards a US mindset?

The other option is acquisition, buying rivals leading to industry consolidation.

Oftel may actually end up removing competition through their actions

[Lightscribe]

1 hour ago, Axeman123 said:

An interesting thought experiment: what if covid measures were just preparing us for a robotic supermarket? Masks and perspex screening at the tills to lower social interaction to ease the transition to removing the human interaction. Following lanes and marks on the floor to get us ready to obey, in readiness to shop in proximity to potentially deadly robots. Enforced 2m distance in queues to make it more predictable for an AI.

Ding Ding Ding 

Amongst lots of other things. Societal  change has to have a slow psychological introduction and adoption. Too fast and the frogs will realise they’re in the boiling pot.

More and more people will be reliant on ‘universal credit’, not so much of a stretch to cast the net wider to ‘universal basic income credit’ is it?

A credit score that you once had to write off to Experian about. Now you get daily/weekly notifications on if it’s going up or down. Not so much of a stretch by adding ‘social’ in the front of it.

Your mobile phone, you never missed in the 80’s, turned into a dumb Nokia that was handy for phone calls in the 90’s and today interacts with everything you do and can’t leave the house without it. Even wearing smart watches to always be in connection. 

The pandemic restrictions have been handy to psychologically mould the next steps in which the above digitally  connected world would form acceptance in everyday life.

[Axeman123]

3 minutes ago, arrow said:

...made her will so that her money skipped a generation. 

Seen that scenario with a friend. His wife's maiden great aunt skipped her neices/nephews and had her estate split equally among their kids, without advance notice to anyone. The outrage of the friend's wife's mother, who thought it was all coming to her as favorite neice, was epic. She had apparently been relying on that windfall to bail her out of a lifetime of "all fur coat and no knickers" flash living. Accusations of forgery, conspiracy, exploitation of a vulnerable elderly person were made, along with demands for the beneficiaries to sign away their windfall as the right thing to do, the full monty. Announcing that her own kids would not inherit anything from her (they wouldn't have anyway) so they were worse off overall etc.

[arrow]

11 hours ago, sancho panza said:

 

Clogs to clogs in three generations is the old saying.That does presume though that you can't educate your way around the cyle which I think you can.I was at boarding school with some old money types and they were lovely people with their feet on planet earth.The new money was somewhat brasher .

Old money have had generations of planning to avoid tax and preserve their wealth. A whole Industry of accountants and lawyers help them through trusts and financial vehicles that preserve their money through generations and in spite of divorce. Very few make wealth themselves. Most old money know it. I'm not talking here about rentier income. 

We don't have that advantage. You get punished for success in this country through tax, especially income tax and inheritance tax, to pay for others. Again I'm not talking about rentiers. This together with the near destruction of grammar schools keeps us working and keeps us and our kids in our place.

 

 

[StrugglingMillennial]

9 minutes ago, arrow said:

Old money have had generations of planning to avoid tax and preserve their wealth. A whole Industry of accountants and lawyers help them through trusts and financial vehicles that preserve their money through generations and in spite of divorce. Very few make wealth themselves. Most old money know it. I'm not talking here about rentier income. 

We don't have that advantage. You get punished for success in this country through tax, especially income tax and inheritance tax, to pay for others. Again I'm not talking about rentiers. This together with the near destruction of grammar schools keeps us working and keeps us and our kids in our place.

 

 

I'm sure it's featured on here before buts it's worth watching for the new people.

 

https://youtu.be/np_ylvc8Zj8

 

If you manage to get rich enough I would suggest that you open a offshore trust account.

[working woman]

Following on from the retail comments above, plus some interesting things my husband has found out that will affect motorists..........

A few interesting changes recently in my clothing retail job......

Rotas will now be automated, usually done by each store manager, will now be done by HO. I imagine it is automated and shifts allocated based on daily sales patterns. Staff are not happy as once done, we won't be able to swap hours with each other as the rota is fixed. If we don't want to work a particular day, we need to give 4 weeks notice.  I work Sundays, which is ok with me, but the rest of the staff don't want to do it and will have to take it in turns.

To access the rota, you need a computer or mobile phone. It will no longer be a piece of paper pinned up on the wall.

Retail want to give you small contracts, 4 / 8 / 12 hours a week, expect total flexability and for you to work nowhere else.

Availability and Flexability - Yesterday, I had to say which hours and days I was available to work, I made my availability really flexible, incase they are looking at flexibility as a criteria for redundancy selection.  A previous company I worked for was looking at this, so been there done that. We are currently on short time working for Jan-Feb. 

Shoplifting - I have worked in several shops and they tolerate 1% of stock to be stolen. If it goes higher, they put  measures in place, like rearranging shop floor to eliminate blind spots, move popular items for theft nearer to the tills, get staff to stand at the front door more.  We do an annual stocktake and they work out the losses.

New technology to combat Shoplifting and help Stockcontrol - two new changes coming up. We usually put a security tag on the clothes when they come into the store. From this year, clothes will have a security device installed at the factory, I think it is a micro chip. The price tag is also changing to allow tracking of items. We will no longer have to manually count for stock take, staff will walk around each section, eg jeans, and wave a machine and it reads all the chips. Each item of clothing, via it's chip, will be able to show it's journey from factory, to warehouse, to store and if  who/how it was paid for. I wonder if they will be able to see where stolen goods are. Interesting.

All of the above costs money and will be passed onto the customer.

Our CEO months ago said prices would be going up due to inflation.

We are going "green"  - lots more green fabrics such as organic cottons, bamboo, cotton from better cotton initiative, new green ranges. This will all cost money, our customers, mainly wealthy boomers, are really price conscious, often quibbling over an item in the sale for £10. 

-----------------------------------------------

New Rules for motorists:

My husband has been looking at the new rules - coming in soon Where drivers have to give way to pedestrians at junctions, who look like they are about to cross - where is the big publicity campaign on this???? Lots of confusion and accidents inbound. 

New car charges in some city centres - several will be affected, I think they include Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol ....

We occassionally drive into our local city centre for shopping, leisure and in a few months time will be charged £10 to drive in. On top of parking charges, that will be at least £15 before we start. My husband has been listening to things I pick up from this thread and said, there you go, that's inflation for you. Lot's of consequences to that..... less shopping in the cities and more online or at out of town shopping malls. If they want to push people onto buses, families with pushchairs will struggle. 

Black boxes in cars

My husband also noticed that in the future all new cars will have a device that senses the speed limit on the road and not allow the car to go over that speed limit.

New technology is being used in interesting ways.

 

 

 

 

[Castlevania]

53 minutes ago, DurhamBorn said:

Regulator gave BT inflation+ increases when they thought the BOE told the truth  Everyone in telcos follows the backbone network incumbents.BT would just go to court and win.Telco contracts are cheap,i think government will be looking elsewhere.Lewis is a twat,he spends his life trying to get shirkers bennies paid from tax and NI of young white men working in warehouses on low wages.Just another woke warrior bankrupting the currency.

To be fair, in the early days of Money Saving Expert he did provide good advice which was work out what you’re spending money on, pay off your debts, have a cash buffer incase anything goes wrong. I mean it was common sense stuff, but then most people are rubbish with money.

[Volcanic]

I used to read the MSE site but got fed up with people saying they are struggling to feed kids but have numerous pets or have just started a sky/phone subscription.

The same applies to all these benefits programmes.The tattoos are mind boggling.

[Lightscribe]

1 hour ago, DurhamBorn said:

Lewis is a twat,he spends his life trying to get shirkers bennies paid from tax and NI of young white men working in warehouses on low wages.Just another woke warrior bankrupting the currency.

I’ve said this for years, yes Lewis is a twat.

Typically like an IFA advising on the here and now (telling students to max out their student loans etc) based on current economic conditions and not considering anything possibly coming.

I laughed when he went into hiding in 2008, causing half the nation to scramble getting their money back after he advised everybody to stick it all in Icelandic banks for maximum interest (what could go wrong?)

As DB says the only thing his sites are good for is getting extra bennies for the shirkers and avoiding car park fines.

Hopefully after the BK hits, he’ll go into hiding again along with Krustie and Phill.

[Axeman123]

32 minutes ago, arrow said:

ou get punished for success in this country through tax, especially income tax and inheritance tax, to pay for others.

A while back someone here posted an academic with a theory that historically revolutions are the product of surplus elites, with no available place in elite institutions, taking a place for themselves from someone else by recruiting the masses via populism. I can beleive that many at the top share this view of history, and the punishment of success is a feature not a bug to keep you or I in our designated strata. The availability of tax shelters for people already in the elite strata would also fit with this.

[M S E Refugee]

1 hour ago, DurhamBorn said:

Lewis is a twat,

He is indeed! 100%!

[reformed nice guy]

43 minutes ago, M S E Refugee said:

He is indeed! 100%!

 

[Axeman123]

1 hour ago, working woman said:

Rotas will now be automated, usually done by each store manager, will now be done by HO. I imagine it is automated and shifts allocated based on daily sales patterns.

Tales of managers playing favourites or bullying people through rota manipulation, and the attached risk of an employment tribunal or bad publicity, must keep HO up at night.

It also reeks of squeezing until the pips squeek, not wanting a single body on a shift beyond the minimum justified by sales.

[Lightscribe]

2 hours ago, Innkeeper said:

I don’t doubt these things will be possible but currently the more invasive elements of a mobile phone eg Bluetooth, location services etc can be switched off by the user.  Not having that capability implies a Chinese style level of surveillance.  It’s possible in the future that a majority even in the UK will demand permanent surveillance ‘for their safety’.  The level of enthusiasm for the track and trace system (it’s capabilities rather than its actual results) is a worrying warning....

Just because Location services is turned off from other apps (permissions) doesn’t mean Location is off on the device. How do you think Apple AirTags and remote tracking/wiping works?

https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-find-your-iphone-when-it-is-powered-off/amp/

[Joncrete Cungle]

1 hour ago, Volcanic said:

I used to read the MSE site but got fed up with people saying they are struggling to feed kids but have numerous pets or have just started a sky/phone subscription.

The same applies to all these benefits programmes.The tattoos are mind boggling.

I remember seeing a family on TV complaining about not enough bennies and being skint, must have been 15 years ago or possibly a little more. They had a newish at the time BMW on the drive outside the house, humongous big TV in the living room with Sky box.  Both parents grossly fat with large blingy gold chains, bracelets and possibly a dozen sovereign rings between them...

 

[Option5]

24 minutes ago, Lightscribe said:

Just because Location services is turned off from other apps (permissions) doesn’t mean Location is off on the device. How do you think Apple AirTags and remote tracking/wiping works?

https://9to5mac.com/2021/06/07/ios-15-find-my-network-can-find-your-iphone-when-it-is-powered-off/amp/

Location is from several sources, GPS (obviously), local wifi, Bluetooth and cell triangulation. You can turn them all off but then you can't use your device for most things.

For stealth it's best to turn off everything but the phone (triangulation is not that accurate) and turn the phone off when not in use. Even better is to use a PAYG sim paid for and topped up with cash at a place nowhere near your usual locations. You can buy several  top up vouchers for 3 and use them as required. 

For sat nav use a stand alone unit (Tom Tom etc) and turn off all journey recording.

There are other tricks the really paranoid or law breakers use but for normal folks they're not worth the effort.

[Lightscribe]

5 minutes ago, Option5 said:

For stealth it's best to turn off everything but the phone (triangulation is not that accurate)

This changes with narrow beam forming and 5G (used to work in cellular analytics)

[DurhamBorn]

2 hours ago, Axeman123 said:

100%. He got lucky when the government used PPI refunds as helicopter money IMO, and he was able to claim some credit to launch his brand. He has never managed to repeat that trick.

Do you think the political threat of windfall taxes will drive telecoms towards network investment/buy-backs/paying off debt instead of paying dividends this cycle? Could paying large dividends be seen as a risk, perhaps leading to a shift towards a US mindset?

I think we will see it in oil for a while for certain,more buybacks,pay down debt ,slow divi increases.Telcos have the advantage of being a small bill at the start.£20 to £30 a month wont register,£110 to £200 will for energy etc.Telcos have a good whip as well,investment.I think the sectors should avoid special divis though,it wont look good as they do a news article with fat Sharon who reckons she cant afford to use her phone for her Mcdonalds Uber eats.