Renew Balls – the yet to be invented baseload briquettes touted by Labor – fail
Millions of Australian households have been warned to brace for savage hikes to their power bills after prices in the country’s biggest electricity market rocketed to their highest levels on record.
In a report released today, the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) said wholesale power costs soared to unprecedented levels in the three months to June 30 amid the crisis engulfing the energy system.
Average prices for the quarter were $264 per megawatt hour — an extraordinary 203 per cent increase on the first three months of the year, and about six times higher than the long-term trend.
Meanwhile, the fake news ABC uses a c-word to cover up a Democrat-made disaster in America:
The United States economy has unexpectedly contracted in the second quarter, with consumer spending growing at its slowest pace in two years and business spending declining, raising speculation the economy is on the cusp of a recession.
By some definitions, a second-straight quarterly decline in gross domestic product (GDP) would be considered a “technical recession”.
The Biden Recession wasn’t unexpected, isn’t a matter of speculation and isn’t “technical.”
I seem to remember a certain someone here writing that Labor were going to bring the cost of power down, now that they are in government.
Take a look on Google News, all the headlines either pretend the US is not having a recession or soften it by not saying the word recession. And they pretend to report news instead of propaganda.
It’s been obvious for months that the US would go into recession and that we will likely follow. The question is, can the blunt instrument of interest rates fix the problem when the actual problem is government picking winners instead of ensuring fair markets and will this end up being far worse than just a recession?
While the alp dithers with more green follies and market interventions, the IMF now predicts real wages will not grow in Australia til later this decade. Didn’t take long for that bs promise to evaporate. Shameless.
Enjoy your poverty good and hard.
Yep.
Two Australian families end up in hospital trying to heat homes with coal burners (24 Jul)
People will try not to freeze to death. Some who don’t know better will asphyxiate themselves with carbon monoxide producing charcoal briquettes. All because Albo and his fellow travelers refuse poor people the ability to stay warm affordably.
You get the government you deserve. On your own head be it. Wall to wall morons
Inflation. recession, war, and you know the thing, all of this is the fault of the US government that is going to be elected in 2024.
Not a joke. Nixon was blamed for the war and subsequent recession that JFK started and LBJ poured diesel all over.
Hey why did wholesale prices go up? Gas prices, coal prices rising and units in coal fired power station breaking down. It was for the last quarter as well.
thanks Liberals and Nationals who put a break on renewables.
There is no such thing as a technical recession. If you think the USA is in recession when it is at full employment and unemployment has not risen at all then you have been breathing to many methane fumes at the coal mine. It would also mean the Fed’s job is done.
Err Kennedy dies in 63, nixon came to office in 69
That is not say it wil lnot go into recession but that might occur much later in the year or next year.
Great comparison, Jannie.
That’s exactly what happened to Nixon.
Watergate was also mostly a hoax. See Tony Thomas’s latest on that at Qaudrant.
Bless.
Non Mentis
Hey why did wholesale prices go up? Gas prices, coal prices rising and units in coal fired power station breaking down. It was for the last quarter as well.
Still got your head in the sand about government induced sovereign risk, and have not yet realised that solar and wind are both now and forever, intermittent providers.
We could try for battery storage, but you have already admitted that batteries are not economic. Maybe everyone should buy a household generator?
Yeah CL that’s a good article, its even worse than I thought. When I was a young man I thought Watergate was a serious scandal that undermined democracy. It became so embedded in the consciousness of the English speaking world that “gate” become a suffix for scandal.
Fast forward 50 odd years and I watched the Russiagate saga in astonishment. Wapo, Woodward and Bernstein are cheerleaders for the spooks. Watergate was a a drop in the bucket compared to Russiagate. The Democrat party using the instruments of state (Alphabet intelligence agencies) to spy on and undermine their domestic political opponents. Or is it the other way round?
Why is this such a surprise? Businesses have been getting whacked on energy for years. I have seen examples – big companies – where energy costs jumped 100% in five years to 2020.
Gas was wrecked when the Gladstone LNG (three trains in one go!) were allowed without firm rules on diverting domestic gas. Now Bass Strait is running down we have known for some time that this year was likely the first where “flex” supply was not available for peaks. AEMO says the peaks in future years are rising and supply is going the other way. So buckle up!
Electricity has had a problem since the system security rules led to belt and braces investment and made distribution the cost driver. Now we have ageing plant that lacks big incentives for maintenance. When plant goes off line – and a lot has this winter – we burn lots of very expensive gas. Again, something we’ve known for years.
Investors now have the incentive to sit back and wait until the train smash gives them options with big returns instead of a sensible asset replacement plan.
Everyone involved in this story is culpable. Lots of people knew this was coming and none of them did a thing.
Agree, but many of them have encouraged the problem. Creating winners with market distortions that favour supply that cannot reliably meet demand. Then creating a hostile environment for traditional supply both for inputs and outputs has meant those providers gear up to take short term profits only.
yeah Jannie still can’t get her dates right and of course watergate was a hoax. We do know he tried to cover it up ( when he di not need to.)
Yeah russia did not try to interfere with the 2016 election despite everyone finding out they did.
Oh the primary school drop out does not understand the difference between batteries for families and batteries like the telsa battery which is very profitable/
If we had kept the price on carbon we would not be experiencing all of these fossil fueled price hikes.
Stil waiting to hear how albo is responsible for this.
James Hamilton on US economy and whether it is in recession
Jannie
Fast forward 50 odd years and I watched the Russiagate saga in astonishment. Wapo, Woodward and Bernstein are cheerleaders for the spooks.
There is a good book review at Quadrant On-Line. Woodstein seem to have been covering for the CIA even then. Them being “cheerleaders for the spooks” might not be a new practice.
Falsies
AEMO says the peaks in future years are rising and supply is going the other way. So buckle up!
Or the NSW and Vicco governments in particular could ease back on their fanatical anti-gas attitudes? Exploration and development close to the major markets would, in time, solve the problem, but both oppose such things.
F E
Investors now have the incentive to sit back and wait until the train smash gives them options with big returns instead of a sensible asset replacement plan.
This will not happen while ever the renewables touts are allowed first bite of the market cherry, without having to guarantee delivery, still receive huge subsidies, and while the government causes sovereign risk to any business contemplating major expenditure on coal plants.
Non Mentis
Oh the primary school drop out does not understand the difference between batteries for families and batteries like the telsa battery which is very profitable/
Au contraire, the Big Batteries are indeed very profitable, because they don’t attempt to provide power when the Ruinables aren’t delivering, but profit from FCAS, and holding back for the peak prices. They are another form of subsidy farming, and for that reason are not economic.
But a pre-school dropout would not be able to work out that subtle difference.
Non mentis really does need remedial education, while you are at it Boambee can you explain to the moron that I am not a girl. He is mispronouning me or something, and I am going to cancel him.
Myes, how dare Qld develop an export market for the gas fields it develops, when it should have “created firm rules” diverted gas to NSW and Victoria where new gas fields were banned! Oh, and get less money for the gas.
Or NSW and Victorian residents can suffer the consequences of their own actions. How about that?
Entropy: first, the exporters made the assurances. Second, this is the only exporter market globally that has a failed domestic market. Third, Queensland did not approve exports. That’s a commonwealth job.
What Queensland did manage was to have three trains build independent plant which both maximised cost and local inflation and ensured that cost would be a handicap. Even Indonesia forces people to share plant.
Btw: Longford is in victoria. Cooper basin in SA. But I do look forward to Queensland departing and paying its own defence bills.
Jannie
Perhaps Non Mentis should look at your gravatar photo? Or contemplate the difference between Jannie and Janie?
Passing Wind
How long ago was Longford developed? When did the Victorian government ban gas exploration on and offshore?
How long ago was the Cooper Basin developed? What is South Australian government position on gas exploration on and offshore?
What do you mean, “diverting domestic gas”?
The concept is nonsensical … you only own the good after you pay for those goods, and at that point it cannot be diverted anywhere.
If you are trying to find a weird and confusing way to say that greater demand puts upward pressure on price, then sure, that’s normal economics. The greater demand for gas came from various places, such as activists obstructing the coal industry, but exports are at least part of that demand.
For the belly laughs … does anyone remember this?
The guy accusing other people of taking drugs, got every point wrong back in May … inflation is not starting to fall, there isn’t a jobs boom, and the US economy is in a dreadfully bad position.
Not Trampis is on the most dangerous drug of all … drinking his own bathwater. Let’s see whether he is capable of learning from this mistake and considering self improvement.
Boambee
Yes perhaps Non Mentis’s reading difficulties are simply because he needs glasses. On the other hand the Left these days is unable to define the difference between a Man and a Woman, so maybe its a complex psychological issue.
Also I read that excellent article in Quadrant, the spooks have been running deep throat cover for the Democrats for a long long time. Eisenhower was right.
Talking of reading I have recently completed Churchill And His Airmen by Vincent Orange. Absolutely fascinating, it clarifies the greatness of Dowding, Park and Tedder, and the ordinary venality of Leigh Mallory and allies. Not to mention the regular idiocy of Churchill, though fortunately he could be reasoned with and deflected, sometimes, for a while. And the power of the bureaucracy to rule over the politicians and the soldiers, at a cost of countless thousand lives. Oh the Injustice. I am now devouring Dowding by Orange.
I am gonna be in the book market soon. Also heading to Southern Queensland and maybe NNSW. BTW I seem to have lost your email address.
Jannie
Non Mentis has drunk too much Kool Aid, as has Preposterous.
Vincent Orange wrote very well.
I have some more books for sale, are you interested?
oh dear deplorables writing about another subject they have no idea about.
The US economy is fine at the moment. Afterall they have full employment and unemployment has not even started to rise. This is all about the Biden jobs boom.
an economy cannot be in a recession when it is at full employment and unemployment has yet to rise.
The problem the US has is the FED took far too long to move interest rates. You cannot be at full employment and have cash rates at essentially zero.
The yield curve is telling us the market is now expecting the FED to move too far and too fast and hence a recession.
don’t lie deplorables cannot read.
Non Mentis
Afterall they have full employment and unemployment has not even started to rise.
What is the workforce participation rate now compared to the end of 2019?
PS, whether deplorables can or cannot read is open to debate, but the simple, undebatable, fact is that pre-school dropouts cannot punctuate a five word sentence.
To me the low unemployment rate in the US seems to be because of two things.
1. Inertia from the restart of business after the Covid lockdowns.
2. Reduction of supply by the Covid vaccination mandates.
On (1.) there’re signs that the inertia is petering out as large companies are firing wukkas, especially in the IT and entertainment industries. Especially as the companies overhire and overexpand after the relaxation of lockdowns. And on (2.) there’s a secondary effect where the insanely fearful are not coming back to work because they’re afraid to be in the office amongst all those possibly infectious people. Firms are trying hard to get people who’ve been working from home come back to the office again, and some are just refusing. Eventually this will translate to more firings.
Ha ha, he’s doubling down!
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/EMRATIO
Employment was better in 2018 and 2019 than today … you should learn to read a chart. You can also look at “The Employment Situation – June 2022” which shows that the three months April 2022, May 2022 and June 2022 showed almost no change in the total civilian labor force, but slight shrinkage in June, actually a smaller total than May … so it’s very slowly going backwards at the moment. If you prefer newspaper headlines then pick your favourite US business … there’s been unusually big layoffs in the home building and mortgage industry, and of course plenty of tech layoffs.
Here’s a quick copy and paste, nowhere near comprehensive.
17 May: THE VERGE – “Netflix is laying off 150 employees and cutting dozens from its Tudum fansite”
19 May: CRUNCH BASE – “Y Combinator Warns Startup Founders Of Economic Downturn: Plan For The Worst”
19 May: ECONOMIC TIMES INDIA – “Cars24 fires 600 employees across departments”
10 June: CRN – “Security Vendor OneTrust Lays Off 25 Percent Of Workforce”
14 June: COINDESK – “Coinbase Lays Off Around 1,100 Employees”
14 June: REUTERS – “Warner Bros Discovery to cut nearly 1,000 ad sales jobs”
22 June: NYPOST – “JP Morgan reportedly laying off hundreds in mortgage business”
23 June: DEADLINE – “Netflix Axes Another 300 Staff, Taking Total Layoffs To Around 450”
29 June: FORTUNE – “Tesla layoffs 2022: Elon Musk lets go of 200 Autopilot workers”
29 June: HOUSING WIRE – “Homepoint restructures operations, lays off workers”
30 June: REUTERS – “First Guaranty Mortgage files for Chapter 11 after layoffs”
7 July: TECH CRUNCH – “Twitter lays off 30% of its talent acquisition team”
12 July: CRN – “Microsoft Confirms Layoffs Ahead Of Earnings”
12 July: FORBES – “Mortgage Giant Cuts Thousands Of Jobs—Warns Of Accelerated Downturn As Housing Market Abruptly Collapses”
18 July: BUSINESS INSIDER – “Vimeo Is Cutting 6% of Its Workforce”
20 July: USA TODAY – “Apple is reportedly slowing hiring and spending amid broader tech layoffs”
22 July: IBTIMES – “7-Eleven Layoffs 2022: 880 Jobs Slashed In Restructuring Effort”
26 July: BUSINESS INSIDER – “Facebook employees are preparing for staff cuts of up to 10%”
26 July: CNBC – “Shopify sinks 14% after company plans to lay off 10% of workers”
27 July: AXIOS – “Vox Media lays off 39 people amid economic uncertainty”
29 July: BLOOMBERG – “Amazon shrinks staff by 100,000, joining Netflix and Google in hiring slowdown”
oh can can anyone spell out how Albo is anyway responsible for the wholesale price rises which mostly occurred when he was in opposition.
This is quoted straight from the BLS.
They ban these people from working, and then they don’t count them in the headline unemployment rate because hey they don’t seem to be looking for work!!!! … and that number increased by 30% in just the last month. Economic sabotage.
Non Mentis
oh can can anyone spell out how Albo is anyway responsible for the wholesale price rises which mostly occurred when he was in opposition.
Like you, he was too stupid to understand that government creating sovereign risk would cause fossil fuel generators to decide to get out while they were ahead. Since Intermittent Unreliable power generators and storage systems are decades away from being even half capable of meeting demand, supply/demand mismatches lead to price increases.
Non Mentis
I asked this question earlier:
What is the workforce participation rate now compared to the end of 2019?
I had assumed (wrongly, as it turned out) that even a pre-school failure who purported to be an economic genius would have the data to hand, and could reply promptly. Tel has pointed toward some indicators that it is now lower. Unless you can provide hard data to the contrary, it must be assumed that this is true, and that your references to the unemployment rate are not relevant.
Not Trampis says:
That has made my day, I am literally ROFLMAO. haha.
Non mentis, Boambee has read and reviewed more books on a range of subjects than you will ever read, even if you live to be 1000 years old.
And I am looking for a few more books to read because I am only 100 years behind him.
America is in recession regardless of what others assert. Gross private investment is falling, the PMI (Purchasing Managers’ Index) has dropped below 50, meaning that manufacturing is contracting. Another bad sign is that Walmart sales are dropping. The reason that unemployment is not rising is that inflation is reducing the cost of labour by cutting real wages. However, once a combination of falling sales and an increase in other costs offset the cost advantage of labour unemployment will rise.
The relation of GDP to growth has to be considered. To put it in simple terms, economic growth is when capital accumulation grows faster than the population. This is why there are times when GDP can be misleading indicator. From 1934 to 1940 US annual rate of GDP growth was 6.8% and yet the economy was shrinking, which means there was no net capital accumulation.
A good indicator of capital consumption is the age of machinery. Harold Moulton found that in 1925 the amount of machinery over ten years of age that was considered obsolete was 44 per cent, in 1930 it was 48 per cent, in 1935 it was 65 per cent. (Harold G. Moulton, Income and Economic Progress, Brookings Institution, pp. 23-24, 1935.) Anderson reported that by 1940 the figure was 70 per cent and that in 1939 there was a tremendous amount of slack in the economy. (Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States 1914-1946, LibertyPress, 1979, pp. 491, 479-48).
In short, there was considerable capital consumption. Professor Higgs calculated that from 1930 to 1940 net private investment was minus $3.1 billion. (Robert Higgs, Depression, War, and Cold War, The Independent Institute, 2006, p. 7). W. Arthur Lewis calculated that from 1929 to 38 net capital formation plunged by minus 15.2 per cent (W. Arthur Lewis, Economic Survey 1919-1939, Unwin University Books, 1970, p. 205).
It is a grave mistake to confuse GDP with capital accumulation. By capital I mean the material means of production that raises, directly or indirectly, the marginal productivity of labour and hence real wages.
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-i-dont-know-if-were-in-a-recession-im-not-a-biologist/
Humpty Dumpty strikes again.