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

[Majorpain]

Quote

Far from a rescue, EDF is now being gouged by Emmanuel Macron in order to avert a violent jump in electricity prices and to head off a second gilets jaunes uprising before the French elections. Prices will rise by just 4pc with no review until February 2023. 

The company has been ordered to sell a further 20 TWh of power to rivals at a giveaway price of €46.20 per MWh so that they can pass this on to households.

EDF will have to buy this power on the market at nearer €200 per MWh. The company is already saddled with €40bn of pure and hybrid debts, more than its shrunken market worth. 

The trade unions and the manager-shareholders of EDF are up in arms, threatening legal action and accusing Mr Macron of undermining the long-term viability of the company in order to “fulfill electoral promises”.

They called the decision “abusive” and a violation of protected “freedom of enterprise” under the French constitution.

For good measure they also said it breached the Declaration of the Rights of Man dating back to 1789, the first time I have ever seen the French Revolution evoked in a corporate dispute.  

Whilst i saw that EDF's share price had declined, I don't think anyone had posted that Macron is pretty much throwing EDF under the bus to maximize his re-election chances next year!  That's on top of 20% of France's 56 reactors being offline with problems.

[ThoughtCriminal]

How the fuck does a council end up owning 50% of an energy retail company and then decide to front it with huge loans as it's collapsing? 

 

I'd fucking hang the lot of them. And I'm not joking 

[Axeman123]

US 10yr now just above 1.85%.

[AWW]

7 minutes ago, ThoughtCriminal said:

How the fuck does a council end up owning 50% of an energy retail company and then decide to front it with huge loans as it's collapsing? 

Because not a single person will lose their jobs over it.

[ThoughtCriminal]

Just now, AWW said:

Because not a single person will lose their jobs over it.

Bingo.

 

Worse than that, there won't be one single consequence.

 

In a sane country they'd be dragged into the street and hung from the nearest lampost.

 

Instead they just whack the council tax up and have another taxpayer funded lunch as they laugh at what a bunch of mugs we all are.

 

Skin in the game solves everything.

[spygirl]

4 hours ago, belfastchild said:

It may not be relevant at all but last year I did an online postgrad course at Harvardx (yeah, not as fancy as it sounds) titled something like 'energy within the contraints of the environment'.
Not a single thing about windmills (or insulation), all solar and nuclear. Lots of talk about the US being sufficient forever in coal, oil, gas. Very nuclear heavy, examples like more people killed in Fukashima from the chemical plant explosion due to the tsunami than at the nuke station + projected cancers over 40 years. (didnt mention chernobyl at all!)
I kept getting the calculations using the price of natural gas vs everything else wrong, needless to say the questions were written a few years previously when gas was virtually being given away. Answer in each case was pretty much natural gas was cheaper than everything else, by a factor.

Interesting was the global energy uses charts. Never in human history has the use of a fuel declined when a new technology came in (biomass to coal, coal to oil, oil to gas etc). I always thought china was rolling out the coal power plants until their nukes came online. Going by that the coal will never go off in China.

I remember almost moving to Texas once, was initially going to be on my UK T+Cs with a per diem (which was more than my entire UK salary) with movement to US T+Cs after green card/visa. I saw the 6 days a year annual leave and thought fuck that!

Take unpaid days.

The thing noone mentions is that the US tend to retire/stop working earlier than Europeans esp Brits.

[spygirl]

2 hours ago, AWW said:

I used to run teams in London, New York and France.

The New Yorkers were paid about 50% more than the Londoners and French, but only got 10 days a year of annual leave. You could effectively sack the bad ones on a whim.

The Londoners got 25 days leave when they started, rising to 30 days after 5 years' service.  You could sack the bad ones, as long as you could prove to some HR drone that they were underperforming.

The French got, as far as I could work out (because it was completely opaque), around 40 days annual leave, because the French get additional days' leave if they work "long hours", which means anything more than 35 hours a week.  The bad ones were effectively unsackable.

Just be thankful you never had to run a team in Belgium.

 

 

[TNS]

40 minutes ago, ThoughtCriminal said:

How the fuck does a council end up owning 50% of an energy retail company and then decide to front it with huge loans as it's collapsing? 

 

I'd fucking hang the lot of them. And I'm not joking 

Reminds me of that Icelandic bank crisis years ago where tons of councils had cash stored there....

[BadAlchemy]

 

[belfastchild]

1 hour ago, ThoughtCriminal said:

How the fuck does a council end up owning 50% of an energy retail company and then decide to front it with huge loans as it's collapsing? 

 

I'd fucking hang the lot of them. And I'm not joking 

I was involved in a lot of p2p whilst you could still make money in that particular ponzi. I also invested in one of 'green' p2p sites and was happy enough with my lot.
I saw that they had introduced municipal loans, where ordinary people loan councils money at pretty shite interest rates. I wondered why councils had to go to p2p places instead of just direct funding or taking a million quid out of the ratepayers dosh instead of farming out.
I decided that that was time to bail out of p2p, even the green ones. Made a bit of a loss because I couldnt exit one or two early enough (couple of hundred quid - which at one point was the monthly interest payment or two at 13-15% pa)

Anyway, guess which council was the first? Million quid for solar and battery storage. Interest rate was about 3 times what I get on my cash isa now (comparable to what it was back then). In other words the square root of fuck all.

[leonardratso]

some dates;

ROYAL DUTCH SHELL B ORD EUR0.07 - Important Information

 

Name Change.

The proposed new name of the Company is Shell plc. There will also be a simplification of the company's share structure by establishing a single line of shares.

The Name Change received shareholder approval at the Meeting held on 20th December 2021. The company will also simplify its share structure by establishing a single line of shares and remove the complexity of the A/B structure. The company will also align its tax residence with its country of incorporation in the UK.

The Name Change is expected to become effective week commencing 24th January 2022.

The last day of dealing in the dual listed RDSA & RDSB shares is expected to be Friday 28th January 2022. The start of dealing in the single line of Shell plc ordinary shares on the LSE is expected to be Monday 31st January 2022. They will trade under the Ticker "SHEL"

Should you retain your holding, your account will be updated when the Name Change and share simplification becomes effective. Please note we will only communicate to you again if the terms of the event change.

If your Existing shares formed part of a Trade Plan or Regular Investment, these will be deleted. You will need to log online or call us to set up a new TradePlan or Regular Investment plan in the New shares.

Should you wish to find more information about the Name Change, please visit the Royal Dutch Shell website at www.shell.com/investors. You can also find more detail in the Important Information section of your online account.

[DurhamBorn]

2 hours ago, ThoughtCriminal said:

How the fuck does a council end up owning 50% of an energy retail company and then decide to front it with huge loans as it's collapsing? 

 

I'd fucking hang the lot of them. And I'm not joking 

They will do anything to try to prop up their none jobs and pensions knowing they will be bailed out.Councils are probably the biggest threat to working people after bennies.Incredible to think a local council is invested in this type of thing,no doubt Labour ran.When my dad was a councillor during the early 90s an issue meant you had to declare an interest and leave the meeting.Over half the Labour councillors had to leave.They had shares in the company Thatcher privatised .

[Chewing Grass]

2 minutes ago, DurhamBorn said:

Councils are probably the biggest threat to working people after bennies.Incredible to think a local council is invested in this type of thing,no doubt Labour ran.

Council is Labour through and through with a sprinkling of Lib dems and a Couple of Tories in the posher bit.

Been Labour run forever.

[Plan-b]

"Almost no one" Thanks to DB some did, Cheers                                        

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-did-almost-no-one-see-inflation-coming-11642519667?mod=watchlist_latest_news                            

[CannonFodder]

I was involved in a procurement for a council once; had to declare that i didnt have an interest in any of the tenderers. An interest was defined as more than 25k in shares.

I thought at the time one could do a lot with 24k if one wanted to play the system on pre award dealing. Am sure many of them do.

[DurhamBorn]

25 minutes ago, Plan-b said:

"Almost no one" Thanks to DB some did, Cheers                                        

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-did-almost-no-one-see-inflation-coming-11642519667?mod=watchlist_latest_news                            

All going nicely now for everyone hopefully.I dont say it, but i put huge amounts of work into my roadmap so everything was ready.Only mistakes were i should of put more into US inflation plays and sold and re-invested them.I should of known those closest to the Fed press would re-bound first,rookie error.Instead of 60/40 Mosaic/Telefonica for instance it should of been 70/30.Telcos were 25% of my portfolio and were flat (apart from BT doubling) while others 3x and 4x.However the telcos are now moving nicely and the sector by sector running has enabled top slicing and re-allocate.I actually trimmed some BT today on the double to add the wealth managers.I had a big holding so sliced 10%.

If people remember back when BP was bouncing around £2 and the thread was full of people wanting 10p more off,then wanting to sell at £3 i said to just ignore the price until there is a 4 in front of it.A really important lesson is if you trust your roadmap let things go to where they are going in their own time.It touched 4 today.Its going to 7 i expect,9 with divs over the cycle,so just let things go where they are going in their own time.

[Democorruptcy]

Just saw some bin men on the news who had been on strike because they were only offered a 7% pay rise, when they were asking for 20%. A compromise deal was then agreed with the council at 11%.

[Hancock]

5 minutes ago, DurhamBorn said:

All going nicely now for everyone hopefully.I dont say it, but i put huge amounts of work into my roadmap so everything was ready.Only mistakes were i should of put more into US inflation plays and sold and re-invested them.I should of known those closest to the Fed press would re-bound first,rookie error.Instead of 60/40 Mosaic/Telefonica for instance it should of been 70/30.Telcos were 25% of my portfolio and were flat (apart from BT doubling) while others 3x and 4x.However the telcos are now moving nicely and the sector by sector running has enabled top slicing and re-allocate.I actually trimmed some BT today on the double to add the wealth managers.I had a big holding so sliced 10%.

If people remember back when BP was bouncing around £2 and the thread was full of people wanting 10p more off,then wanting to sell at £3 i said to just ignore the price until there is a 4 in front of it.A really important lesson is if you trust your roadmap let things go to where they are going in their own time.It touched 4 today.Its going to 7 i expect,9 with divs over the cycle,so just let things go where they are going in their own time.

Here is hoping it follows Daveys roadmap!

[Libspero]

5 hours ago, DurhamBorn said:

Unilever must be under massive pressure from inflation and desperate.Their woke crap turned my stomach,glad to see them squir

I’m catching up to the idea that sentiment here is primarily focused on traditional energy..  and that seems an excellent call.  But I presumed things like consumer essentials would be considered “value / recession proof stocks”.

I have absolutely no love for Unilever for exactly the reasons you give..  but I’m struggling differentiate between what makes a stock inflation proof vs a liability.  I would have expected consumer staples to be the former.  Can you help explain the prevailing logic?  I’m confused 

[Noallegiance]

Government beats off a legal challenge to development of oil and gas in the North Sea (msn.com)

[Bricormortis]

18 minutes ago, Libspero said:

I’m catching up to the idea that sentiment here is primarily focused on traditional energy..  and that seems an excellent call.  But I presumed things like consumer essentials would be considered “value / recession proof stocks”.

I have absolutely no love for Unilever for exactly the reasons you give..  but I’m struggling differentiate between what makes a stock inflation proof vs a liability.  I would have expected consumer staples to be the former.  Can you help explain the prevailing logic?  I’m confused 

DB might put you right meanwhile I will attemp an answer by saying the thing is companies that can front run inflation partly because of assets already paid for or financed on low interest rates, and the ability to just keep sticking it to customers. That might give you some insight into why people here were keen to load up on the sick puppy vodafone.

Unilever have to suffer increasing input costs whilst being squeezed by cheaper competitors or people realising they dont need 5 different cleaning products

Welcome to the thread Libspero.

[CannonFodder]

Liz appears to have had the special lobotomy that allows double think to appeal to the oiks. Which bookie has best odds of her being next prime minister?

[Plan-b]

2 minutes ago, CannonFodder said:

Liz appears to have had the special lobotomy that allows double think to appeal to the oiks. Which bookie has best odds of her being next prime minister?

I wish idiots like her would stop this Russia bashing, apart from depressing my Gazprom shares, if the ruskies got the arse and cut supplies Europe and by default the UK would be back to the stone age.

[CannonFodder]

8 minutes ago, Plan-b said:

I wish idiots like her would stop this Russia bashing, apart from depressing my Gazprom shares, if the ruskies got the arse and cut supplies Europe and by default the UK would be back to the stone age.

She would find her way into the history books by bringing us back from the stone age, ofc first we have to get there.

Bit like a project manager being recognised for saving his project from complete disaster, of course first he needs his project to be a complete disaster to have the opportunity.

[Bricormortis]

Microsoft just paid 50 billion $ for the makers of call of duty .