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

[JMD]

16 minutes ago, Don Coglione said:

Is the entire climate agenda arse-backwards? Officially, it's "fossil fuels are destroying the planet, we must act to save it", but what if it's really "oh shit, the fossil fuels are running out and life is about to get really, really shit, so we need to get people softened up for what's coming, we'll dress it up as saving the planet"?

Yes agreed, my point precisely.  Ie What if the energy, ever increasing GDP/consumption existential 'crunch points' were identified say 30 years ago (I know many books of that time actually predicted this), and that the 'green story' was formulated to begin harnessing weak minds and to harden opinions, in order to help sell otherwise unpopular and draconian future policies?

[Loki]

13 minutes ago, JMD said:

Yes agreed, my point precisely.  Ie What if the energy, ever increasing GDP/consumption existential 'crunch points' were identified say 30 years ago (I know many books of that time actually predicted this), and that the 'green story' was formulated to begin harnessing weak minds and to harden opinions, in order to help sell otherwise unpopular and draconian future policies?

Spending the past couple of decades demonising oil companies so they stop/reduce exploring was a bizarre way of addressing the problem of an oil shortage

[Bobthebuilder]

32 minutes ago, JMD said:

SP, I think what you have outlined there is all probably true.  However I find i'm increasingly worried that our politicians actually do know what's coming. I mean what if the 'Convid experiment' was judged by TPTB to be a success in terms of control, media manipulation, etc, and that the Ukraine war is now the 'follow up'? People stayed home to save the NHS/their granny, so why wouldn't they do the same and much much more to save the planet?                                                                                                                                                   I guess my fear is that the green agenda will rear its ugly head again soon, but this time with a disingenuous political mashup for a fight-back/mitigation policies against the energy shortages, supply chain breakdowns, and Putin's immoral war... I'm rambling a bit here I know, and perhaps even verging into tin-foil territory, then again perhaps the last 2 years have just made me paranoid? However the shockingly spastic policy responses from our politicians since Ukraine does cause me to think a massive global policy initiative is being contemplated? But what form it might take, I don't know.                                                                                                                                  (I don't follow David Ike - promise! -  but if there are some here that do, is he perhaps saying this is the biggest problem/reaction/solution event in history?)

I do not think you are being tin foil hat at all, so much stuff happening right now that just looks under hand to me.

I am starting to notice a few Ukraine license plates around London, mostly vans nice ones too maybe £30k worth, now they might be delivering aid, but they looked like they were doing multi drops to me. Also, friends nearby have told me they are seeing an increase in Polish and Romanian vehicles in their council flat car parks. Seems like freedom of movement again under a different banner.

Mr Durham Born often warns about the possibility of systemic collapse, I am starting to think it may be written in as it were, everything is starting to smell of bullshit.

[JMD]

On 20/05/2022 at 11:00, DoINeedOne said:

@DurhamBorn and others whilst i was looking into MoneySuperMarket i had this in my notes the information below which involves the insurance companies, not sure how badly it will effect them or even benefit them if they can get customers to stay longer

but thought it would be interesting for some here 

 

Regulatory Risk

 

ENBP = Equivalent New Business Price

The FCA in (28 May 2021) published its policy statement formally confirming its proposals for tackling price walking in the home and motor insurance markets.

Price walking, also known as the loyalty penalty or dual pricing, refers to when new insurance customers receive more competitive and cheaper premiums compared to long standing customers renewing their cover.

According to the FCA, over six million existing insurance customers would have saved £1.2 bn in 2018 if they had paid the average price for their actual risk, as opposed to falling victim to the price walking model.

The regulator added that because of price walking, insurance customers have had to shop around for their cover every year to avoid higher premiums.

Many firms offer a below cost price to attract new customers. They also use sophisticated processes to target the best deals at customers who they think will not switch in the future and will therefore pay more the FCA explained.

Insurers will be required to offer renewing customers a price that is no higher than they would pay as a new customer.

It is likely that firms will no longer offer unsustainably low-priced deals to some customers. However, the FCA estimates that these measures will save consumers £4.2 bn over 10 years, by removing the loyalty penalty and making the market work better.

Alongside the new rules on price walking, the FCA has also introduced rules to

- Give most consumers easier methods of cancelling the automatic renewal of their policy.

- Require insurance firms to do more to consider how they offer fair value to their customers.

- Require home and motor insurance firms to report data to the FCA so that it can supervise the market more effectively.

Consumers can still benefit from shopping around or negotiating with their current provider, but won’t be charged more at renewal just for being an existing customer.

The FCA plans to review the effects of its remedies in 2022, ahead of a full evaluation in early 2024.

Alongside today’s policy statement, the FCA has also published research on how incentives affect consumers’ choices, focusing on purchases of motor and home insurance made through price comparison websites. The research was undertaken to inform the regulator’s approach to the new pricing rules.

Several respondents felt that, unless our rules prevented it, firms might offer discounts and incentives to new customers to subvert the aims of the pricing rules. For example, firms might offer a discount for new business customers and reduce this discount at subsequent renewals to reproduce the effect of price walking.

To prevent firms circumventing the object of the rules, the rules on incentives apply when the incentive is either wholly or partly funded by a firm setting a renewal price. This means that if a firm that sets the renewal price funds a cash or cash equivalent incentive that is given to customers by another party in the distribution chain, then the firm that funded the incentive will still need to include it in the ENBP for renewing customers.

We remind firms that using cash or cash‐equivalent incentives to systematically discriminate against customers based on tenure would breach the rules.

This is going to be a bumpy ride for insurance brands and consumers alike in the short term. The FCA has revealed that cash and cash equivalent incentives, other than toys and carbon off setting, cannot be used to entice new customers without being offered to renewing customers. This means the savviest consumers who shop around each year will see prices rise and discounts and offers disappear.

Their example of bribing customers with toy gifts reminded me of the Compare The Market ads. Will they I wonder also ban adverts doing that, especially ones using puppets with Russian accents... How very insensitive under current times?!

[Don Coglione]

39 minutes ago, Loki said:

While increasing control as a bonus

The control is an essential part of dealing with what is coming. The psychologists on the SAGE panel weren't there for shits and giggles and never, even in wartime, have we witnessed such global co-ordination at governmental level.

[Axeman123]

From the Suez Crisis up until Thatcher there was a pervasive narrative within our ruling class that the decline of the UK was innevitable, and that a managed decline was the only/best strategy to mitigate this. This narrative was proven false, and was presumably just a cover for surrender to either the US or Russia (depending on political alignment). History will judge the current shite the same way IMO.

[leonardratso]

23 minutes ago, JMD said:

Their example of bribing customers with toy gifts reminded me of the Compare The Market ads. Will they I wonder also ban adverts doing that, especially ones using puppets with Russian accents... How very insensitive under current times?!

nearly;

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2022-03-01/not-so-simples-russian-meerkats-aleksandr-and-sergei-pulled-from-news-ads

Not quite the toys themselves, but the ad campaign i suppose, maybe they'll make a comeback with ukranian accents, is there much difference?

[HousePriceMania]

6 hours ago, Pip321 said:

The distances are unimaginable.

Travelling at the balmy fast speed of light ie that’s 7 times round the world in one second….it takes 9 minutes to reach the Sun.

It takes about 5.5 hours at light speed to reach Pluto ie the edge of the ‘simple’ solar system. So several hours but Voyager 1 actually took 35 years and V2 around 41 years….just to cover a few hours light speed  

Now for the mind fuck…to ‘hop’ to the next star isn’t hours but it is then 4.5 years away at light speed…tens of thousands of years away for Voyager. That’s a lot of space.

To leave our little galaxy would take 100,000 years (at light speed) and once we get out of the local cluster of galaxies it’s a long long ride before we see another galaxy…..and there are billions of galaxies.

Puts into context having to walk a mile into town when the car breaks down.

As we are off thread weekend (I didn’t take much prompting)…..what I love about physical science is it doesn’t really provide answers just more and more questions. Our perception using our senses and equipment is quite limited and I like Brian Cox’s attitude which is one of awe (the awe of nature) rather than a smug scientist who think maths answers any of the real questions.

Now if you lot can get that context and sell me some BPs shares cheap on Monday I would be most grateful.😉

Youve not factored in the slowing of time at factor's of light speed, iirc, and I probably don't, if you can get to something like 20% lightspeed the journey to the nearest star is about 1 year, or at least significant reduced. 

[Don Coglione]

4 minutes ago, Axeman123 said:

From the Suez Crisis up until Thatcher there was a pervasive narrative within our ruling class that the decline of the UK was innevitable, and that a managed decline was the only/best strategy to mitigate this. This narrative was proven false, and was presumably just a cover for surrender to either the US or Russia (depending on political alignment). History will judge the current shite the same way IMO.

Not sure I agree with that; the fall of the British Empire was always going to hurt the mother country. Then we discovered North Sea oil - hurrah, we are saved! Oh, no, we pissed that up the wall too and it's all-but run out, there will be no encore.

The above is clearly UK-specific, the life-turning-to-shit-real-soon is global.

[Heart's Ease]

Chatting with a pal on a very smallholding earlier.   Feed for chickens up by a third. 50p for each shorn sheep fleece. Heating oil at 95p/l. Government restrictions phasing out lead airgun pellets so price up from £8 to £20 a tin.

 

[Don Coglione]

Just now, Heart's Ease said:

Chatting with a pal on a very smallholding earlier.   Feed for chickens up by a third. 50p for each shorn sheep fleece. Heating oil at 95p. Government restrictions phasing out lead airgun pellets so price up from £8 to £20 a tin.

 

Fuck me, they were a quid a tin when I were a nipper!

50p for a fleece can't be right?

[DoINeedOne]

25 minutes ago, JMD said:

Their example of bribing customers with toy gifts reminded me of the Compare The Market ads. Will they I wonder also ban adverts doing that, especially ones using puppets with Russian accents... How very insensitive under current times?!

 

3 minutes ago, leonardratso said:

nearly;

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2022-03-01/not-so-simples-russian-meerkats-aleksandr-and-sergei-pulled-from-news-ads

 

Broadcasts of adverts featuring Russian meerkat Aleksandr Orlov and his loyal companion Sergei will be restricted on television, because of concerns about sensitivities surrounding the invasion of Ukraine

[Axeman123]

4 minutes ago, Don Coglione said:

Not sure I agree with that; the fall of the British Empire was always going to hurt the mother country. Then we discovered North Sea oil - hurrah, we are saved! Oh, no, we pissed that up the wall too and it's all-but run out, there will be no encore.

The above is clearly UK-specific, the life-turning-to-shit-real-soon is global.

I don't dispute that. I am just pointing out that the narrative of managed decline would have implied us becoming "belgian" or whatever, with a token defence force and no real influence. The Thatcher alternative may well have relied on: fluke oilfields, financial deregulation that got us in todays mess, and a global web of tax havens etc; but at least it involved doing something.

[Yadda yadda yadda]

4 hours ago, THE SOUP DRAGON said:

Here is a sobering thought regarding workplace pensions. Announcement made regarding a change in the default option and how it is now going to be more ESG focused. No need for any action to be taken they'll handle the change.

Now this wasn't a surprise based on what I have learnt here, what was shocking though was the information given out on how many people stick with the default option and change nothing. 

99% do nothing.

Most people are petrified of investments, especially pensions. They have no understanding of them and believe it is all beyond them. Not worth the effort to even try. Almost fatalistic. Might as well be witchcraft in their eyes.

[Spiney Norman]

19 minutes ago, Yadda yadda yadda said:

Most people are petrified of investments, especially pensions. They have no understanding of them and believe it is all beyond them. Not worth the effort to even try. Almost fatalistic. Might as well be witchcraft in their eyes.

The above is true.

Amongst my collegues there is a level of both ignorance and apathy that is truly shocking, and they are proffesional engineers. God only knows how bad the general public are.

[The Bear of Doom]

39 minutes ago, DoINeedOne said:

 

Broadcasts of adverts featuring Russian meerkat Aleksandr Orlov and his loyal companion Sergei will be restricted on television, because of concerns about sensitivities surrounding the invasion of Ukraine

Any relation to Dimitry Orlov? 

On an investment note, the Ad Agency that came up with that concept must have made a fortune!

[Joncrete Cungle]

1 hour ago, Don Coglione said:

Fuck me, they were a quid a tin when I were a nipper!

50p for a fleece can't be right?

I still have tins I paid £3:50 for but am running low, another thing I need to stock back up on that has gone up in price a lot.

50p per fleece sounds about right, it costs more per fleece to get a shearing gang in to shear the sheep. Wool has been burned / put in a muck heap before as the cost and time in preparing it and taking it to a buyer far outweighed the price paid per fleece.

 

[Joncrete Cungle]

12 minutes ago, Cattle Prod said:

Bloody hell, what happened in 2004/2005?! 

Credit expansion, overseas buyers, MEW, lifestyle / horsey buyers, millionaire, billionaires and oligarchs etc buying a slice of inheritance tax avoidance and sheltering money / assets from their native governments. Oh and claiming the farming subs 'fraudulently' in the process.

From memory the top 10 recipients of EU agricultural subs in the UK wouldn't know the arse end of a cow from a sheep and have never done a day's farming in their lives. Queen and Charlie boy, James Dyson, RSPB etc.

 

 

[Castlevania]

2 hours ago, Don Coglione said:

Is the entire climate agenda arse-backwards? Officially, it's "fossil fuels are destroying the planet, we must act to save it", but what if it's really "oh shit, the fossil fuels are running out and life is about to get really, really shit, so we need to get people softened up for what's coming, we'll dress it up as saving the planet"?

This is my view. I have no idea whether increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a bad thing (I’d expect plants to thrive from higher levels) but we realistically do need to reduce the use of oil and gas simply because it’s not finite.

[MrXxxx]

4 hours ago, JMD said:

Don't they now become PM?!

No, to become PM you need to get a First in a subject [Classics] even less relevant to your job role than Media studies! :-)

[DurhamBorn]

3 hours ago, Don Coglione said:

Is the entire climate agenda arse-backwards? Officially, it's "fossil fuels are destroying the planet, we must act to save it", but what if it's really "oh shit, the fossil fuels are running out and life is about to get really, really shit, so we need to get people softened up for what's coming, we'll dress it up as saving the planet"?

This ^ .Its very likely thats why.I dont see many trees going up on all the grouse moors.I think the whole thing is about getting the plebs to consume less oil and gas so it lasts longer for the rich.They also know they need 40 to 50 years for renewables.If they want to save the planet they could start by planting trees etc into all these huge areas of council owned grass,yet very little happens.

[MrXxxx]

On 20/05/2022 at 21:27, DurhamBorn said:

London? whats wrong with Newcastle,2hrs 40 from Kings Cross,£3.60 a pint of Stella and better night life than London ,oh and i get free train travel,my dad has a British Rail priv card,i do come from the town who invented trains 

Err, the women?...

...assuming of course 'that is the way you swing' as we say 'Down South' :-)

[Plan-b]

6 hours ago, THE SOUP DRAGON said:

Here is a sobering thought regarding workplace pensions. Announcement made regarding a change in the default option and how it is now going to be more ESG focused. No need for any action to be taken they'll handle the change.

Now this wasn't a surprise based on what I have learnt here, what was shocking though was the information given out on how many people stick with the default option and change nothing. 

99% do nothing.

So I've reviewed my poxy Nest company pension choices, I'm very fickle so guess what I went with?

Theres 5 choices so vote accordingly  

[MrXxxx]

15 hours ago, geordie_lurch said:

For those saying Newcastle is a shit hole and saying come to stabby stabby London are you mental There's much lower chance of any bother up here when some of you shandy drinkers get a bit shouty

Must admit I have found Northerners [generally] are better at 'Holding their drink' than Southerners, and if/one gets a bit 'shouty'/'lairy' their mates normally 'step in', tell him he is being an ar$e, and then take the pi$$ out of him until he calms down a bit. :-)

[Don Coglione]

3 minutes ago, MrXxxx said:

Must admit I have found Northerners [generally] are better at 'Holding their drink' than Southerners, and if/one gets a bit 'shouty'/lary their mates normally 'step in', tell him he is being an ar$e, and then take the pi$$ out of him until he calms down a bit. :-)

Newcastle is a cracking town for a night/weekend.