This Christmas...
"Oh it's so cold!"
Every European...
"Mommy I can't feel my toes"
Becomes a snowman!
"Tory MPs urge Sunak to launch campaign on cutting energy use"
Gasless Gringoes, 21st of December in your freezing living room on Netflix.
Eh, that's what people said about 2022/23 winter. Did anything actually happen? I didn't notice
Either you're too young to pay your heating bill or extremely privileged..... Many families had to decide between heating or eating.
The last one was taken straight from a Guardian headline, only changing Truss to Sunak where the government campaigned to get people to "reduce their heating to save money". It took a lot of public effort such as the don't pay campaign to block attempts from the government and corporations from raising energy prices too much. Those prices are still going up right now sources and the overall cost of living has gone up ever since the beginning of the war source.
Although inflation has dropped, it's still at an alarming 7.9% and so all the cost increases from last year will only compound in the coming winter, even if the Trans-Sahara pipeline is not affected. Thankfully all the Windsor palaces have pretty good heating and probably can help those who need a hot place to stay.
Good. There are consequences for
acting likebeing warmongering barbarians who can't let go of their neocolonial urges.Proles freezing to death while their bourgeoisie overlords laugh and toast in their heated palaces is good?
Don't worry about the EU getting cut off from African LMG because the USA is ready and eager to supply whatever LNG EU nations need. Ofc just like when the US stepped in to take over the market opened up by the destruction of Nordstream, the EU will be paying a heavy markup over what they would have paid for African LNG. God bless the USA, advancing US national interests, and the power of free markets. Shareholders rejoice!
Interesting. Never heard of it. But it could be that is project will never have been build. Russian gas has been mostly replaced by liquid gas tankers. And the demand of gas is shrinkinhg in Europe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Saharan_gas_pipeline?wprov=sfla1
Thing is that LNG is significantly more expensive and trades on spot markets making prices unpredictable. It's also not possible to ship LNG in same volumes as pipeline gas. Gas in Europe hasn't been so much replaced by LNG as the supply having been reduced leading to the recession and deindustrialization we're now seeing. It's no longer cost effective to do manufacturing in places like Germany, and industry is now shutting down.
The EU economy prognosis for 2023 is still positive. As far as I am aware only some countries are in a recession, not the EU in total.
And that "industry is shutting down" is also exaggerated.
Pretty much all the major EU economies are in recession, and Germany in particular is doing terribly. If German economy crashes then the rest of EU follows. And no, industry shutting down is not exaggerated. Deindustrialization is now a term that even entered mainstream parlance. It's simply not possible for EU to be competitive in any sort of manufacturing given the energy prices in Europe.
Germany is in a technical recession, but france, Italy, Spain are not (yet). Don't get me wrong. I think it is very likely a recession might come, but as far as I can see it is not there yet.
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/2995521/17254747/2-31072023-BP-EN.pdf/998638f3-f643-aa29-a170-ba1d34da7858
Eurozone PMI is below 50 which is a sign of economic contraction, we can debate whether this constitutes a recession currently, but I see no reason why the current trajectory would change going forward
https://www.fibre2fashion.com/news/textile-news/eurozone-s-manufacturing-pmi-plummets-to-43-4-in-jun-2023-288648-newsdetails.htm
Yeah, many signs are pointing down and I won't be surprised if we get a recession here. But until it's definitely there I will wait.
As for this indicator. Never heard of it, but there seem so many of those that I wouldn't trust them unconditionally. This one for example points up:
https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/industrie-auftragseingaenge-deutschland-staerkter-auftragsplus-seit-drei-jahren-100.html
Yeah, many signs are pointing down and I won't be surprised if we get a recession here. But until it's definitely there I will wait.
As for this indicator. Never heard of it, but there seem so many of those that I wouldn't trust them unconditionally. This one for example points up:
https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/industrie-auftragseingaenge-deutschland-staerkter-auftragsplus-seit-drei-jahren-100.html
Ultimately this comes down to energy costs. Production in Eurozone is now much more expensive because input costs are now higher. Cheap pipeline gas was what allowed Germany to compete with US and China. There is no viable alternative in the near term. It's possible that Germany will be able to build out renewable infrastructure that will provide cheap energy at some point in the future, but that's going to take years to do.
German companies are already starting to rely on Chinese companies
- https://carnewschina.com/2023/08/02/germans-are-waiving-the-white-flag-in-china-as-vw-plans-to-use-ev-platforms-from-leapmotor-saic-and-xpeng/
- https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/china-be-centre-mercedes-benz-2025-ev-sales-drive-automobilwoche-says-2023-07-23/
- this video is a has a good summary as well https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lK1TOBc5Txc
I think things will be a lot more clear by next year, but so far all the indicators seem to point towards only one possible trajectory here.
As for your video on "Germany's worst fears are coming true: car brands moving production to China". I think the car sector has it way worse. China is way better at building EV vehicles, which is pushing European companies out of China. German car sales will drop massively.
Yeah, I saw that domestic cars are have now surpassed foreign sales in China, and I expect the trend will continue. Germany is basically screwed in the near term given that car industry is a huge part of the economy there.
Energy was expensive, especially last winter, but it came back to "normal" levels.
Gas for example is at 10% of the high of last August and around the level of 2019.
Oil is more or less the same worldwide, so there is no disadvantage for Europe.
So which energy do you mean?
https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas
Low demand is part of the reason why the prices have come down recently, but the problem is that LNG pricing is volatile and LNG simply can't be delivered in the same volumes as pipeline gas. Meanwhile, Russia is selling oil at a discount to both India and China. India then resells the oil to Europe at a markup. Russia is also expanding their gas pipelines to China as we speak.
Again, if you don't believe me, then just wait and see where things are next year.
So you think that the biggest thread energy wise is the votality of lng? I believe that this is a problem, and if it's true it may lead to another crisis in winter.
But right now the storage is nearly full, so if the winter is weak there will probably no shortage of gas and no problem in winter.
I thought that you had a different reason that will more likely (say >70%) cause more chaos in winter.
There are several issues here. First, LNG prices are volatile which makes it problematic for the use in the industry. If you're doing manufacturing, you can't have your input costs fluctuating all the time. Second, LNG capacity is much lower than pipeline capacity even when accounting for storage. So, overall available energy is lower. Third, there aren't a lot of LNG terminals available at the moment, so it's not possible to process LNG quickly if demand rises.
All of these problems make it difficult for industry to operate in Germany, and hence why we're seeing it moving out of Germany right now. As the industry leaves that means jobs are going to be disappearing leading to higher unemployment, and economic activity will slow down because people are going to be saving money. This is the real concern for Europe and Germany in particular.
- Show
I think this recession will be for Europe only. The US will canibalize part of EU's industry while the rest moves to Asia. Living standards will never recover. Maybe this even becomes a depression. As you can see Germany's PMI is fast approaching major recession levels.
Yeah, the US seems to be better off.
But there still does not seem to be data that the EU will be in a recession very soon, it Still at +0,?%
