Stock market is a "fully-fledged epic bubble" and will burst
Discussion
98elise said:
PeteinSQ said:
xeny said:
Wtf do you propose if they all fail? AIUI, the surviving companies don't want orphan customers as current gas prices are above the price cap, and adding customers will make them exhaust their hedged supplies sooner.
Increase the cap with a view to reviewing again in 3-6 months so that suppliers can pass the cost on to customers. A lot of these smaller suppliers are just badly run and wouldn't really be missed, and if there was a true need for them new ones will eventually take their place.I changed companies and SP then hounded me to rejoin. By that I mean multiple calls and texts per week. I blocked their number and they started calling me from other numbers. I asked them multiple time to take me off their lists, and they would stop for a couple of weeks, then restart.
It's not efficient to micromanage every client account but a general system that tends to result in accounts maintaining a buffer as opposed to incentivising a deficit at the other end of the scale is prudent business.
Sometimes part of the problem is the end consumers' natural bias, especially us Brits, to see large incumbents as terrible thieves yet grant small disrupters some form of hero status when most of the time they are deliberately dishonest showers of s
t whose entire angle is to bend the rules and play fast and loose in the hopes of building enough market share to become kosher before they either get st down or their deliberate risk trade implodes. PeteinSQ said:
xeny said:
Wtf do you propose if they all fail? AIUI, the surviving companies don't want orphan customers as current gas prices are above the price cap, and adding customers will make them exhaust their hedged supplies sooner.
Increase the cap with a view to reviewing again in 3-6 months so that suppliers can pass the cost on to customers. A lot of these smaller suppliers are just badly run and wouldn't really be missed, and if there was a true need for them new ones will eventually take their place.In reality, us end consumers still pay the same whether there are caps or not and under market forces rules we probably pay more under a market that has intervention.
The 'cap' in many ways is a political bit of gamesmanship and trickery and there are better ways to protect against profiteering, cartels and default than enforcing a system whereby companies have to take out absolutely enormous futures contracts and then hope for the best.
DonkeyApple said:
98elise said:
PeteinSQ said:
xeny said:
Wtf do you propose if they all fail? AIUI, the surviving companies don't want orphan customers as current gas prices are above the price cap, and adding customers will make them exhaust their hedged supplies sooner.
Increase the cap with a view to reviewing again in 3-6 months so that suppliers can pass the cost on to customers. A lot of these smaller suppliers are just badly run and wouldn't really be missed, and if there was a true need for them new ones will eventually take their place.I changed companies and SP then hounded me to rejoin. By that I mean multiple calls and texts per week. I blocked their number and they started calling me from other numbers. I asked them multiple time to take me off their lists, and they would stop for a couple of weeks, then restart.
It's not efficient to micromanage every client account but a general system that tends to result in accounts maintaining a buffer as opposed to incentivising a deficit at the other end of the scale is prudent business.
Sometimes part of the problem is the end consumers' natural bias, especially us Brits, to see large incumbents as terrible thieves yet grant small disrupters some form of hero status when most of the time they are deliberately dishonest showers of s
t whose entire angle is to bend the rules and play fast and loose in the hopes of building enough market share to become kosher before they either get st down or their deliberate risk trade implodes. Code to put some logic around it like "only review every X months", or "never let the account get over X months buffer" would be a few extra lines. It really is simple.
Their code was proposing another rise in charges when the current level was already creating a huge excess credit.
As a result they lost me as a customer and at every opportunity I will tell people how crap they are.Their attempts to get me back as a customer only alienated me more. I wouldn't use them unless they were the last remaining energy company.
Mr Whippy said:
Better on oil for an Aga these days?
I recall old Aga could be converted, ie, coke, coal, oil, but assume leccy ones are stuck on leccy.
My Dad bought a leccy one but paid £15,000 for solar so it roughly offset the cost.
The Aga was in the house when we bought it. I'd never have had it fitted it personally, they cost a fortune to buy and then cost a fortune to run. I recall old Aga could be converted, ie, coke, coal, oil, but assume leccy ones are stuck on leccy.
My Dad bought a leccy one but paid £15,000 for solar so it roughly offset the cost.
I rationalise its continued use in the house on the basis that it provides quite a bit of heat that we don't have to provide via the gas central heating (I've worked out that it's worth about 2 degrees C in heating upstairs, obviously a lot more in the kitchen). It also dries all our clothes and cooks all the food. It's still an absolutely ridiculous thing and having a run of cupboards and a normal oven and hob put in was financially one of the best decisions I've ever made.
98elise said:
DonkeyApple said:
98elise said:
PeteinSQ said:
xeny said:
Wtf do you propose if they all fail? AIUI, the surviving companies don't want orphan customers as current gas prices are above the price cap, and adding customers will make them exhaust their hedged supplies sooner.
Increase the cap with a view to reviewing again in 3-6 months so that suppliers can pass the cost on to customers. A lot of these smaller suppliers are just badly run and wouldn't really be missed, and if there was a true need for them new ones will eventually take their place.I changed companies and SP then hounded me to rejoin. By that I mean multiple calls and texts per week. I blocked their number and they started calling me from other numbers. I asked them multiple time to take me off their lists, and they would stop for a couple of weeks, then restart.
It's not efficient to micromanage every client account but a general system that tends to result in accounts maintaining a buffer as opposed to incentivising a deficit at the other end of the scale is prudent business.
Sometimes part of the problem is the end consumers' natural bias, especially us Brits, to see large incumbents as terrible thieves yet grant small disrupters some form of hero status when most of the time they are deliberately dishonest showers of s
t whose entire angle is to bend the rules and play fast and loose in the hopes of building enough market share to become kosher before they either get st down or their deliberate risk trade implodes. Code to put some logic around it like "only review every X months", or "never let the account get over X months buffer" would be a few extra lines. It really is simple.
Their code was proposing another rise in charges when the current level was already creating a huge excess credit.
As a result they lost me as a customer and at every opportunity I will tell people how crap they are.Their attempts to get me back as a customer only alienated me more. I wouldn't use them unless they were the last remaining energy company.
BobsPigeon said:
In terms of a global equity crash the UK would seem to be small fry compared to the impending collapse of Evergrande (which has debts of $300billion)
Yup. The problem is that there is a lot of UK originated wealth that is invested in the Chinese economy that would be lost plus a lot of Chinese wealth in the UK that would need to be repatriated. And that aside, a major Chinese situation should blow big holes in the UK banks, probably starting with HSBC and Barclays. The last big Asian crisis was back in the late 90s when the UK was pretty robustly insulated from Asia whereas today we are pretty heavily exposed.
How many FTSE companies are maintaining their hefty debt obligations on the back of revenues from Asia? Quite a few I imagine. There would certainly be very hefty rightdowns should Chinese consumers have to stop shopping to divert money to keeping their homes!
BobToc said:
Governments get it wrong, but you’ll see meaningful Chinese government intervention in the event their attempts to gently deleverage the property sector go wrong (and I’m not sure they would necessarily consider a debt restructuring of Evergrande as having gone wrong).
I suspect that this is likely to be correct. What will be interesting is to see if they take the Western approach of bailing everyone out or the more traditional act of wiping out everyone involved from top to bottom and which Western institutions get hit?DonkeyApple said:
BobToc said:
Governments get it wrong, but you’ll see meaningful Chinese government intervention in the event their attempts to gently deleverage the property sector go wrong (and I’m not sure they would necessarily consider a debt restructuring of Evergrande as having gone wrong).
I suspect that this is likely to be correct. What will be interesting is to see if they take the Western approach of bailing everyone out or the more traditional act of wiping out everyone involved from top to bottom and which Western institutions get hit?egomeister said:
Bail out the internally held debt and let the external stuff wipe out I'd imagine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-5864721246and2 said:
egomeister said:
Bail out the internally held debt and let the external stuff wipe out I'd imagine
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58647212I don't tend to follow China too closely as it's a bit too macro and outside the circle of competence for me, but speaking to some who do their concern seems to be that it's simply the first of many, with several other similarly troublesome developers in the area overly reliant on ST debt. Some of the anecdotes around the scale and pace of asset growth and residential markets in places like Shanghai certainly make for pretty astounding reading.
DonkeyApple said:
egomeister said:
Bail out the internally held debt and let the external stuff wipe out I'd imagine
Wipe the whole lot and seize the business?I'm sure there will be no recourse for anyone holding the external debt though, and no doubt there will be plenty in the west willing to lend a hand recapitalising things so they too can get screwed over in another 20 years or so.
I'm not particularly concerned about Western exposure to the Chinese high yield property credit, it's the exposure to broader growth in China that will be troublesome. It's not at all clear what the Chinese policy response will be, but I take some comfort from there being a sufficiently large internal problem that they'll have to deal with.
I watched a video this morning that said that the Evergrande debt was the tip of a $52 Trillion housing bubble. It also said that the comunist party had wiped something around 50% off the likes of Alibaba and was going after tech and gambling. It seems they care more for control than market value and personal assets. Another issue for them being that a large amount of debt is held as USD.
Edited by 46and2 on Thursday 23 September 09:30
Edited by 46and2 on Thursday 23 September 09:32
China has pulled a very clever trick over the last 30 years in masking what is a standard communist kleptocracy as something else.
The difference between China and the West is that the option of starving the population into submission is still on the table as a political strategy and one large sections of the population will volunteer for, Moa is more popular now amongst young Chinese people than ever he was and the current leadership are well aware that any economic disaster is likely to be followed by a backlash of people literally driving themselves back into the dirt and only further empowering the current leadership. I mean is genius level politics tbf, it will damage the world economy, decimate the Chinese people but only further empower and enrich the current leadership.
The difference between China and the West is that the option of starving the population into submission is still on the table as a political strategy and one large sections of the population will volunteer for, Moa is more popular now amongst young Chinese people than ever he was and the current leadership are well aware that any economic disaster is likely to be followed by a backlash of people literally driving themselves back into the dirt and only further empowering the current leadership. I mean is genius level politics tbf, it will damage the world economy, decimate the Chinese people but only further empower and enrich the current leadership.
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