Global Recession
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@Tim said in Global Recession:
@nzzp Not sure if commodities prices will keep NZ and Oz out of recession this year? I guess not.
I hope it does, but not expecting it here. Aus looks way less affected; they are pushing on with massive infrastructure spending.
Here, not so much. Prices going bananas, wages not keeping up, discretionary being eaten by high interest rates - it's looking ugly at the end of the year frankly.
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@taniwharugby the number of folks coming off fixed rates in the next 6-12 months is pretty scary. We are doing some reno and going through the lending process. We are committed to it but we have been thinking about rates increasing, let alone material and general building costs!
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@Paekakboyz yeah the numbers are crazy.
Construction (rebuild costs) in NZ are off the charts, huge number of NZers are underinsured on thier homes, even some of the online calculators that are out there to give an 'indication' are often way out.
We were looking at upgrading the car early last year, which we would have needed a loan for, decided against it.
Hell, even the 2nd hand market for cars is crazy, with service vehicles (utes, vans, small trucks) values remaining static or even appreciating due to lack of 2nd hand parts and vehicles and the slow down in new vehicles.
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it's almost as if shutting the entire world down, and printing a fuckload of money to pay people to stay home might have had a few consaquences
who knew?
but you know, lives over the economy and all that
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@mariner4life the follow up war in (part of) Europe and the ongoing supply chain/Covid shit is amplifying that earlier influx of spending. I wonder where the tipping point may have been... like if we could have handled 1-2 of these things at once, but successive events have turned it into a burning building and we only have water guns.
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maybe we shouldn't have outsourced all of our manufacturing to the country that is happy to just wall their people in to their buildings
even the shit that is made elsewhere is made up of components manufactured there.
don't overlook a huge amount of industries taking full opportunity of global chaos to just jack their prices (looking at you shipping)
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@mariner4life said in Global Recession:
maybe we shouldn't have outsourced all of our manufacturing to the country that is happy to just wall their people in to their buildings
even the shit that is made elsewhere is made up of components manufactured there.
don't overlook a huge amount of industries taking full opportunity of global chaos to just jack their prices (looking at you shipping)
Trade is good though, right? Like this will settle down, and trade benefits everyone. Trying to force everyone to do everythign winds up in TV being disassembled in Japan, shipped here, and reassembled by hand. It's just nuts.
I get it feels frustrating, but I think the the alternative is way way worse
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@nzzp said in Global Recession:
@Tim said in Global Recession:
@nzzp Not sure if commodities prices will keep NZ and Oz out of recession this year? I guess not.
I hope it does, but not expecting it here. Aus looks way less affected; they are pushing on with massive infrastructure spending.
In some areas, yes. But the Infrastructure NSW is now having another look at some of the bigger things in Sydney:
There might be a kick along from the ALP deciding the country is already up to the tits in debt, so might as well lump a few more billion on there in energy network transformation, but that will depend on private investment.
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https://www.wsj.com/articles/lumber-prices-slump-with-rising-interest-rates-11653835230
Lumber prices sharply down. Link above bypasses paywall.
Inverted V shape inflation curve, with GDP following an L shape?
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Bumbling leaders and their message-minions want the rest of us to believe in unicorns. Surprisingly, some people seem to be a little skeptical. This mornings’ headlines and takeaways:
UK expected to enter a recession this winter until mid-2024
- Inflation set to hit 40-year high of 13.3 per cent
- Inflation now expected to exceed 13% at its peak this year
- main cause of all this is energy bills which by Oct will be triple last year
- interest rates now 1.75%
CNBC poll today: U.S. small business confidence hits all-time low, 77% say inflation will continue to rise, 57% say the recession has already begun.
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@Kid-Chocolate said in Global Recession:
Bumbling leaders and their message-minions want the rest of us to believe in unicorns. Surprisingly, some people seem to be a little skeptical. This mornings’ headlines and takeaways:
UK expected to enter a recession this winter until mid-2024
- Inflation set to hit 40-year high of 13.3 per cent
- Inflation now expected to exceed 13% at its peak this year
- main cause of all this is energy bills which by Oct will be triple last year
- interest rates now 1.75%
CNBC poll today: U.S. small business confidence hits all-time low, 77% say inflation will continue to rise, 57% say the recession has already begun.
If only the UK had a long-term energy strategy that:
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Made effective use of the oil and gas at its disposal in the short term (5 to 15 years) - instead, UK is demolishing fossil fuel power stations meaning elec suppliers are having to pay higher wholesale costs to meet demand
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Invested in the most reliable (albeit capital expensive) fuel source - nuclear - in the medium to long term (10 - 50 years)
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Invested in R&D/incentivised private company R&D for alternative fuel technologies (not just renewables) in the long term to make UK energy secure so as not to be susceptible to supply side shocks like it is currently.
Current energy prices are not just as a result of Russia invading Ukraine. It is largely as a result of governments discouraging the development of new oil and gas fields for a number of years in order to meet (or be seen to meet) climate change targets. This has now exploded in their faces as supply can't just be ramped up overnight to meet demand which has grown, not dropped. Add to this decisions by countries (like UK and Germany) to decommission or fail to replace nuclear power stations and you have a recipe for over-reliance on renewable energy (not efficient currently to satisfy demand) and Russian gas and oil.
This has been exacerbated further by western sanctions that are seeking to remove Russia fossil fuels from the global energy markets. Geopolitics at play, as ever. US didn't want Europe reliant on Russian energy as it posed a risk to US influence. So European (and UK) consumers are feeling the pain of ever rising energy prices.
National leaders have backed themselves into a corner in their pursuit of climate change targets by not being honest with the electorate that doing so was always going to result in much higher energy costs.
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It’s always tempting to look for a reason or reasons why we get into such predicaments and then to apportion blame accordingly but in truth it is always a combination of things that provide the environment for things to happen. As @JC said on another thread, the powers that be are largely just passengers.
Certainly we can look back at some decisions and say that even without the benefit of hindsight they were fraught with risk; Europe placing much of its energy dependency on its ideological enemy is a case in point. But what a win it was getting all that cheap gas. Politics is a short term business, it’s only statesmanship that has a long term view.
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@broughie said in Global Recession:
@nzzp it doesn’t have to happen in one day but a conscious effort to move away from dependence on China would be a good long term goal.
Always an awesome idea, until you have to figure out who's losing money. China make everything. Until consumers are prepared to pay more for things made outside China it'll be hard to get traction.
China's approach really worries me. They seem the opposite of a liberal democracy.
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@Catogrande said in Global Recession:
It’s always tempting to look for a reason or reasons why we get into such predicaments and then to apportion blame accordingly but in truth it is always a combination of things that provide the environment for things to happen. As @JC said on another thread, the powers that be are largely just passengers.
Certainly we can look back at some decisions and say that even without the benefit of hindsight they were fraught with risk; Europe placing much of its energy dependency on its ideological enemy is a case in point. But what a win it was getting all that cheap gas. Politics is a short term business, it’s only statesmanship that has a long term view.
Agree with you. I wasn't apportioning blame to one particular administration. UK energy policy has been a mess since the 90s. Lots of ruling parties from both main parties chose to kick the can down the road rather than deal with the pain and leave behind a real legacy..
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@stodders said in Global Recession:
Invested in the most reliable (albeit capital expensive) fuel source - nuclear - in the medium to long term (10 - 50 years)
Complete screw-up by Blair who 20 years ago scrapped any new Nuclear power and ran down UK nuclear technology capability only to reverse the decision 5 years later. Both parties went for cheap gas and electricity imports rather than make the hard, long-term choices on nuclear though.
Credit to Johnson who actually started the ball rolling on Small Modular Reactors.
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@Catogrande said in Global Recession:
As @JC said on another thread, the powers that be are largely just passengers.
True, but there's often a big element of short-term and lazy thinking which exacerbates the problems
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@Victor-Meldrew said in Global Recession:
@Catogrande said in Global Recession:
As @JC said on another thread, the powers that be are largely just passengers.
True, but there's often a big element of short-term and lazy thinking which exacerbates the problems
For sure, I’m not saying that political decisions, actions and inactions don’t have an effect, but usually those things happened way in the past. It is the incumbents that are largely passengers in the here and now (and often getting blamed).
It would be good though if whoever the incumbents were, took note of the current issues and then planned more for the long term. But then you keep going back to Harold Wilson’s quote “A week is a long time in politics “.