Mungler

That is pure Labour nonsense, all of it. I don’t even know where to start.

He could have longed that off for a bit longer. It’s just infuriating that having thrown so much at a Rwanda solution, good old Labour scrap it immediately and start over with an Albanian solution. There’s never a problem spending other people’s money under labour…

You know it. They are clowns who have never operated outside of the public sector or in the real world. Further, everything spins round cheap energy. Whilst we chase net zero there can be no growth.

It’s all so predictable. There will be no interest rate cuts now, inflation has kicked in early. Well, spaffing all that money round the public sector…. Prediction : Inflation, higher interest rates and no growth. We’re in a right mess and heading straight back to the 1970’s. What does anyone expect though? We have a cabinet stuffed full of people who have only known the public sector, not one has ever run a business or known the real world. And now it appears that the Chancellor lied on her CV and has exposed her lack of qualification for the role. I still blame the conservatives. Sunak could have called an election at the end of this month - I think he didn’t because he saw Trump getting into the Whitehouse (all the rational people saw that one coming) and with that Farrage would have made a compelling PM and we would be looking at a Reform government or a coalition with Reform.

Spot on. Rinse and repeat job.

Yes, the BoE cut its rate but no one noticed or did anything - the government’s budget has increased the money supply cost and regardless of what the BoE does, if the market disagrees it will do its own thing to cover its own position / costs. There will be another 1/4 cut in January, but whether anyone sees that benefit on their mortgage statement remains to be seen. My 2p, what the government has planned (flooding the public sector with money), that coupled with no increase in growth (most likely we will be in official recession by the end of Q1 next year) and then will come inflation and interest rates going up. It’s a depressive mess. There’s an obvious economic car crash coming and the government can’t see that what it has planned will make everything a whole lot worse.

So, with centrally controlled currency you can have change - for example we had decimalisation in 1971 and then we dodged the Euro bullet when the Mark, Peseta, Lira, Drachma etc were all abandoned. Bitcoin cannot be varied or changed to suit a changing world. Now then, think of the Enigma machines in WW2 such incredibly advanced cryptography - the computer Turing built filled a ball room. Turing’s computer’s modern equivalent is about half a second of processing power on an average iPhone. When you think of AI and the potential to coordinate processing power - well it strikes me the question is when, not if the cryptography supporting Bitcoin gets cracked. In the meantime people speculate on Bitcoin the same way previous generations did on tulips and NFT’s.

What always worried me about Bitcoin is the future. 20 years ago we were still using Nokia phones and PC computing power…. well, let me put it another way - the Chinese are routinely and busily recording and capturing all US encrypted data and comms traffic for the day in the future there’s computer that can crack the code with ease. Is bitcoin’s encryption solid, but not solid by reference to what is known now. Is it solid from a future advancement of tech currently unknown in the world of tomorrow? That’s where I see the future of bitcoin ending up. In the meantime its price bounces up until the next crash when it goes down and then it’s rinse and repeat. It’s a speculative bouncing ball in the short term.

I really do wonder what’s going on most days. Wales is a basket case and we’re heading that way too - seen all the economic data today? Growth? They’re delusional and everyone but them read the tea leaves and knew the budget would tank the economy. I digress. Back to Wales; they have to hit rock bottom and everyone who backed the current bunch of rabid loons have to acknowledge the mess created and hand over to a Thatcher or Trump.

All makes perfect sense to me. Until the wind change with the Tories doing away with mortgage interest relief on buy to let’s, I had considered them a string to any pension plan - like an annuity. My business partner and I are in the process of pulling those stumps now - it’s given me sleepless nights as we’ve had the same tenants for over a decade and I have no idea where they can go - there’s no rental properties anywhere inside the M25 now, they’ve all gone.

How old are you and how often do you run the pension / exit calcs in your head?

The problem is that the government want to grow the public sector and the public sector has to be funded by the private sector. Throwing inflation busting pay rises around to all areas of the public sector won’t just effect the here and now with inflation but the really big damage comes later with public sector pensions and perks - in short we will be paying for what’s coming next, forever.

Good article here https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/02/21/1068880/how-did-china-dominate-electric-cars-policy/amp/ 2001 was when China kicked off into EVs. We missed that boat and quite probably because the European car industry was firmly anchored to combustion technologies. There has to be some transition to new fuel sources but it needs way better planning, implementation and consumer buy in. In the meantime all the tea leaves are telling me Europe is screwed and in decline.

China has a massive head start on EV tech, R&D and Infrastructure including hoovering up all the rare minerals out of Africa years and years ago. The Chinese state saw the opportunity and grabbed it, and like all good authoritarian regimes forced EVs on their population as well as solar panels and infrastructure - but it worked for them because they didn’t need to talk to unions, town planners, swampy and his mates or health and safety - so factories, solar panels, charging stations, infrastructure all wanged in and super fast. Fair play, they got there first and over a decade ago and no one had free choice to chose otherwise in China and so it’s what it is. Germany cannot hope to go head to head with China in the EV market place and it’s only EU tariffs stopping the full battering of the German car industry. The best selling EV in China right now is the BYD Song which is an SUV (think Audi Q5 crossed with Porsche Cayenne) and (in China) costs $21,000 dollars or £16,000. I can’t think of a single car ever produced by the likes of BMW, MBZ, Audi ever costing under £20k new; indeed a quick Google tells me the cheapest new BMW available is a bottom of the range 1 series for £30k. Anyone want to tell me how Germany was going to survive that? It’s so obviously nuts but if you don’t understand money, economics or jobs and are ideologically driven it doesn’t matter right? As I said nuts and demonstrably so.

I’m surprised Oowee couldn’t find any of those search results but only alighted upon results that everything was rosey in the EV garden - he should probably email the accounts department of VW all the positive EV news and reports, because I’m sure it will ease the lay offs and factory closures. Net Zero has become exposed as a financially crippling ideological crusade. The games up and the economic pigeons are coming home to roost. Don’t forget to keep an eye on Germany and its slow motion implosion. The EU will be next.