Staving Off A Crisis
It's not a stretch (at all) to suggest Europe is currently facing the most onerous economic outlook in modern history, including the sovereign debt crisis.
Although there was good news this week on progress towards meeting gas storage goals ahead of what could be a harrowing winter, the threat of additional supply curbs (as Gazprom fights the Kremlin's economic war) is ever present. Three days of maintenance to the Nord Stream, starting Wednesday, is a stark, if superfluous, reminder that flows
“What kind of “illiterate” simpleton would base their expectations for food and energy prices on the price of food and energy?” Sometimes I wonder if I would enjoy H’s content without his healthy dose of sarcasm and cynical commentary, content would still be great but I would lie if I don’t acknowledge that lines like the one above make my morning coffee a little bit more enjoyable.
LBBD
Completely agree. First encountered h when his commentaries appeared irregularly on SEEKINALPHA; and beenn anregular subscirbher ever since that was an option. These comments form th
LBBD
Completely agree. First encountered H when his commentaries appeared irregularly on SEEKLINGALPHA; have been a regular subscirbher ever since DayOne when that became an option. His commentaries, along w/ NYT and WaPo, always are the first stage in our morning ritual attempting to remain among the survivors in this foundering geopoliticized state.
+1
The key really is folding all of this stuff together in a coherent way that’s long enough to be comprehensive but short enough to be a semblance of concise, and sarcastic enough to be funny / cynical without being so sarcastic that people roll their eyes or cringe. On the first point, if you look at Bloomberg (just to use the obvious example), they’ll take the same one-day rise / fall in European energy prices and write five different articles on it. Then they’ll take the proximate cause (e.g., new Nord Stream maintenance or a plan to cap prices) and do another five articles on that. So that’s 10 articles on (basically) the same story in a single day. It’s not reasonable to expect people to digest all of that. Nobody has that much spare time, and if they do, they’re not going to spend it reading 10 articles on the same subject — they’re more likely to go over to the Times or FT and read a longer, better-written article about something totally different. So I try to pull all of this stuff together in a way that people can readily absorb. On the second point, I think some of the other “alternative” financial portals (and this shows up on finance-focused social media too) have gone so far down the sarcasm road that it’s just clearly derision for the sake of derision or, more to the point, sarcasm for the sake of web traffic. That’s “fine” for those portals, but I think it creates barriers for some (if not most) readers. So, for example, if you’re a staid pension fund manager or someone who just wants good information delivered in an engaging way while sitting at your desk, you don’t want to be opening articles where you feel like, you know, “Oh my gosh, should this even be on my screen at work?” So, I try to avoid that and strike a balance. My sarcasm is biting, but it’s 100% workplace compatible, which I think is important.
It’s all about tact. Even when the world is upside down.
H for Prez
The energy price shock is a big problem for Europe of course. But they will be able to get through this winter. Fortunately natural gas has morphed from a local commodity to an international one so they can import from other sources eventually. By next year additional LNG terminals will be built for imports away from Russian pipelines. And there will be substitution in the next 3-12 months using oil, coal, and renewables. The conservation numbers they are shooting for sound aggressive. The variable in this is temperature- a cold winter would be very unfortunate. Putin has this year to wreck havoc. After this, his hand will be much weaker.
Although work arounds are in process, it doesn’t seem any of them will be as inexpensive/efficient as the deal they had going with Russia. So energy/electricity will be structurally more expensive for Western Europe, going forward?
Seems like they were just keeping their heads above water (economically) with cheap gas. How are they going to compete/thrive with not-cheap energy?
H-Man, I remember a post you did regarding the musings of Harley Bassman on excluding food and energy from the CPI calculation. Harley’s comment was something to the effect that if you exclude enough items from CPI you can get it down to zero.