Holy crap, thank you Easter Bunny! @J.R. only posts reality those who hate him live in some Woke VR simulation
Yield curves are saying the economy is in bad shape for the near future. At the main street level, raises did increase over the last 2 years but were offset by inflation for core goods. Major assets also outpriced Millennials and younger gens out of their starter homes or new/used cars. But maybe the cure to running emmpty is more MMT promises. Nancy wore the pants during the second term while Ronny was half drooling over jelly beans. She had a strong hand in a lot of core social issues. I'm not saying it was great that happened, but some Cons think his term was the best thing since sliced bread until the chronic indictment in chief happened the presidency before this one. It's no one's but the people's fault who allow major parties to make these kinds of shitty candidate decisions. Dems don't have a 70 yr old they don't like that's in a leadership position.
God help anybody that needs to renew their energy plan soon, from 8 cents per/kw a year ago to 16 cents per/kw. Double the damn rate. So much for incentivizing switching to electric vehicles when both gas and electricity are expensive as all hell. Just don't drive or consume anything anymore folks. That's Biden's America. Good grief it all sucks.
Where you living? I'm checking my area and i can still get deals at 11 cents. Not as cheap as before but not as expensive as your option.
Doubtful, my current contract commenced after the 2021 freeze and it was a nice, reasonably low rate.
They didn't kick in right away. There's been many articles and reports about power and gas companies doing this across the state. They didn't start it the day after the freeze ended. They mostly started in 2022 with the charges.
Energy price increases are not just local to TX, the entire nation is getting hit with high rates. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/03/business/energy-environment/high-electric-bills-summer.html
Inflation is generally tied to increasing economic activity which is why raising interest rates is the strongest tools to combat inflation. I'm not a fan of MMT as I think the inflation we're seeing now is partly due to MMT / Keynesian policies practiced by both parties. For a long time we just ignored inflation so Republicans pumped more money into the economy through tax cuts and both parties cranked up government spending. What we're seeing now was likely going to happen sooner or later.
Well, it's been a while since we were able to get 8 cent power. But, yeah it's gotten pricey. No. There was some non-energy costs securitized by Texas last summer that will show up on bills as a small surcharge thru CenterPoint, but I don't think that's started yet in competitive areas. The securitization for regulated areas (CPS, Pedernales, and similar, and the gas utilities) will be bigger and more noticeable. Individual suppliers cannot recoup their past losses because of the competitive pressure. But with inflation and the war in Ukraine, natural gas prices are up and power prices in Texas index to gas prices. So the wholesale price of power is up and that gets passed to retail customers when you're shopping for a contract.
I guess Biden is the world leader since those gas hikes are global. SMDH. How high will we let the Oil and Gas companies keep raising their prices before we see that it's because they can? Not sure how people blame Biden for their greed. What's he supposed to do? Are people suggesting the government take over the Oil and Gas industry to lower the prices?
Deb, its a very simple supply & demand concept. If current oil price (generically speaking) is $110.00 a barrel from Saudi Arabia while Japan and Germany are willing to pay $115.00, your options are simple. You either pay $116.00 or you simply do not get oil. Nationalizing O&G is not going to magically bring fuel prices back down to $2.00. Its a global market. America is bidding against everyone in the world for fuel prices. Europe shutting off nuclear power increases global demand for fossil fuels. Sanctioning Russia and disrupting energy from Russia increases demand for fossil fuels. This might come as a shocker to you, but America does not control the global economy anymore. The only way to reduce energy costs is to reduce demand. The only way to reduce (in the current market) demand is to put the country into a recession. We are likely already in a recession at this point. We are starting to see layoffs (lagging indicator) and they will start to continue to pile up over the next year. Its not necessarily a bad thing.
Its largely due to supply chain disruptions and 12 months of global shut downs. What you perceive as increased economic activity is actually back filling from the COVID19 shut downs and supply chains moving from just-in-time inventories to over stock. There is healthy increase in economic activity and unhealthy increase in economic activity.
