Now 1.89.9âŚ
Sainsburys in my neck of the woods (north of Oxford) was selling unleaded for 1.589 today.
Seems quite reasonable judging by posts in this thread.
Tesco diesel was 1.59.9 the same dayâŚ
Just found out, that from April, my combined Gas and Electricity payment will go up by ÂŁ125/mth.
Dread to think what will happen in October 
It makes logical sense to me. If a little simplistic. However, if his assessment is even close to accurate, everybody should be very angry.
Mines been ÂŁ118 since January.
Same with the petrol firms. Exxon, BP etc making huge profits
She spent a decade trading energy futures so I suspect she probably knows a thing or two. Murphy has form for⌠unique⌠takes on economics as well.
And with what is going on generally, this may have been quite a good move. Yes, there is obviously some risk of nothing actually happening but they have one project already up and running.
Her second sentence is the issue. Her industry has converted an âifâ (future) into âhigher pricesâ (now). Convenient when they no-doubt get paid as a result of the value of the trades. If the price went down the same way Iâd have some sympathy but it never does. According to their precious economics, the higher price would now translate to higher production and a subsequent drop in price. But since oil and gas are handled by cartel, theyâll rub their hands and profit gouge us.
They should shut down the gamblers when there is a war. All they do is massively compound the effect in an effort to maximise their gain. Iâd love to see how much profit Goldman, JP Morgan etc have made on their oil and gas trading desks since the war started.
Yes, because in the event of them not delivering the service you pay for, youâll be here in this very thread complaining that you donât have any utilities and that âpeople didnât plan properly.â
And do what exactly? Are you advocating a centrally planned economy or something else?
No, just fix the prices until reality becomes clear. So far all theyâve done is massively compound the hardship everyone feels by making prices go up because they âthinkâ (maybe validly) that supply may reduce a bit in the future. They are quite happy to shut the markets when everything tanks so they dont get a haircut, in this case, shut the markets so they donât force prices up unnecessarily. They are literally forcing people to starve and freeze because of their desperation to make some more profit.
Youâre going to have to break this down for me.
Just us (the UK) or the whole world? At what level do we fix the price?
âA bitâ in this instance being âA fucking lotâ in terms of European (nb not UK to the same extent) reliance on Russian gas in the here and now.
Who is âtheyâ and which markets have been shut?
Weâve seen what happens when a supplier (Bulb) fucks their futures up. Itâs differently damaging for people but no less painful (the much higher standing rate charges we are facing are the dispersed costs of the failed providers).
For what itâs worth, Iâm not wholly convinced by private utilities but neither am I convinced that randomly trying to jam a spanner in it will be better. I also have found Murphy to grossly oversimplify his arguments and view everything through the prism of state intervention; often in terms as simple as âjust print more money.â He mixed a large dose of- almost entirely wrong- Covid alarmism in for good measure too.
Iâm not convinced that huge state intervention is a good thing right now - doing that as a time of real stress is not ideal. But a simple mechanism of a windfall tax on profits and redistribution via a fixed bill reduction might make sense. Basically, convert dividends to reduce bills, just for one year.
the Dow and FTSE and other markets have been shut as has trading on specific stocks when itâs been deemed necessary. So a temporary stop on futures trading of particular commodities (oil, gas etc) could be done leaving values fixed for a short period.
My irritation is that a very small group of people (oil and gas futures traders) is causing very immediate and real harm to millions if not billions of people to try and make a fast buck. Itâs justified by the plausible sounding argument that europes major gas supplier is at war. But they donât really give a fuck about that. A big tax on profits sounds great but it wonât stop granny freezing to death this winter as her gas price quadruples
Canât see this happening in the UK