Joe Biden's America

The labor market is tight because we really never recovered the growth rate lost during the lockdowns. It's a bit surprising,...

I suspect layoffs will continue though as it will serve as offerings to the golden bull in light of disappointing earnings.

This plus a growing chance of a 50bps rate hike in March will boost stagflation worries.

I'm all for wage increases, esp during a tight labor market but all the capitalists are calling that wage inflation and using that to justify their shitty choices like buybacks from a year ago.

Or just let Tim Cook do his thing where foreign children use their tiny little hands for those hard to reach parts...

 

Incentivized (or forced) by the Inflation Reduction Act.

Tesla to open U.S. charging network to rivals in $7.5 bln federal program | Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) will open part of its U.S. charging network to electric vehicles (EVs) made by rivals as part of a $7.5 billion federal program to expand the use of EVs and cut carbon emissions.

The move could help turn Tesla into the universal "filling station" of the EV era - and risk eroding a competitive edge for vehicles made by the company, which has exclusive access to the biggest network of high-speed Superchargers in the United States.

By late 2024, Tesla would open 3,500 new and existing Superchargers along highway corridors to non-Tesla customers, the Biden administration said. It would also offer 4,000 slower chargers at locations like hotels and restaurants.

Biden wrote on Twitter that the plan to open a "big part" of Tesla's network to all drivers was a "big deal" and would "make a big difference."

In response, Tesla Chief Executive Musk said, "Thank you, Tesla is happy to support other EVs via our Supercharger network."

A White House official said at a briefing that Tesla would be eligible for a subsidy - including retrofitting its existing fleet - as long as its chargers allowed other vehicles with a federally backed charging standard called CCS to charge.

The administration said Tesla had not committed to adopting CCS as its standard, but it must comply with the requirements to qualify for federal funds.

Tesla has 17,711 Superchargers, accounting for about 60% of total U.S. fast chargers, which can add hundreds of miles of driving range in an hour or less. There are also nearly 10,000 "destination" chargers with Tesla plugs that can recharge a vehicle overnight.

Opening up access to Tesla's network would be a quick win for an ambitious federal program to build 500,000 EV chargers by 2030, up from 130,000 currently.

"Select Tesla Superchargers across the US will soon be open to all EVs,"Tesla wrote on Twitter, without elaborating on when, where and how it would open its chargers. It had already planned to more than double its U.S. Supercharger network by the end of 2024, it said.

PLUG AND PAY
Companies that hoped to tap the federal funding for this network must also use standardized payment options that require a single method of identification that works across all chargers, the administration said.

All EV drivers would be able to access these stations using the Tesla app or website, it said.

Adding non-Tesla owners may require a different plug and payment method.

"Tesla does have a hardware and a software solution" to allow for CCS, the White House official said.

Investors and U.S. EV enthusiasts have been waiting for action on chargers from Musk, who said in 2021 that the point of his charging network was "not to create a walled garden and use that to bludgeon our competitors." The company has opened some Superchargers in Europe and Australia to non-Tesla owners since 2021.

Analysts said the amount of federal funds at stake meant Musk had to either act on the plan or risk other charging companies, such as EVgo Inc (EVGO.O) and ChargePoint Holdings Inc (CHPT.N), taking the market.

"The amount of money involved in the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Formula Program provides a strong incentive for Tesla to adapt its strategy to include the installation of CCS ports," said Sam Houston, senior vehicles analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Chris Harto, a senior policy analyst at Consumer Reports, said, "There is no doubt the $7.5 billion in federal charging investment threatens Tesla's competitive advantage. That is actually the entire point of the program."

Opening up its networks could expand funding and revenue for Tesla, but could also erode the brand's exclusivity and make it challenging for the automaker to manage the network, analysts said.

"There is a strong likelihood that if they open the Supercharger network to other vehicles, their current excellent reliability rate will decline significantly," said Guidehouse Insights analyst Sam Abuelsamid.

 

I haven't looked into this at all, but I had a great conversation with my Uber driver the other day. He was driving a Tesla. Does anyone know if the charging port ( sorry if that is the incorrect term) is the same on all these EVs?

 

Tesla has its own charging standard, which they recently opened up with the hope of establishing it as the industry standard. The administration is pushing for CCS as the standard, which has a different connector. Tesla could potentially offer an adapter for the CCS connector to plug into their charger and for their connector to plug into a CCS charger.

 

NPR to Cut 10% of Its Staff
The nonprofit media organization, which has a staff of about 1,100 people, said the layoffs were required because of a slowdown in advertising and a drop in corporate sponsorships.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/business/media/npr-layoffs.html

 

Lowest unemployment in modern history>

 

Show of hands. How many are tired of winning?

 

So glad I refinanced my house at 2.3% when I did.

 

It seems like people are doing okay in bidens America? @basso doesn't seem like the doomsday you paint it

It's funny how the media and the deranged pundits talk about recession 24/7 so people are brainwashed into thinking how bad the economy is. When in reality their personal lives are going good....


Media is the enemy

 

Tesla's charger is never going to be the industry standard. CCS is used globally (outside of Japan and China). There are two types of CCS ports so there is some variation in the port design but the actual technical standards are the same.

The EU already forced Tesla to switch to CCS and it is a matter of time before this happens in other parts of the world. Tesla's charging standard will go the way of Chademo and become a niche standard in North America that will slowly fade away.

 

Delinquencies and charge-off rates still haven’t exceeded pre-pandemic levels.

Troubling signs emerge as credit card debt hits record high

As credit card debt hit an all-time high — just shy of $1 trillion — in the final three months of 2022, delinquencies among borrowers accelerated.

Balances grew $61 billion in the fourth quarter from the previous one to $986 billion, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found. That marked the largest quarterly increase and the highest total since the series began in 1999.

At the same time, the rate at which credit card holders missed payments and became more than 90 days behind was higher than before the pandemic, especially among younger borrowers, a potentially worrying sign when the student loan pause lifts later this year.

“Although historically low unemployment has kept consumer's financial footing generally strong, stubbornly high prices and climbing interest rates may be testing some borrowers' ability to repay their debts," Wilbert van der Klaauw, an economic research advisor at the New York Fed, said in a statement.

The $130 billion year-over-year increase in credit card debt, also the highest annual gain on record per the New York Fed, came as interest rates on credit cards also hit new highs.

The average rate is near 20%, according to Bankrate, surpassing levels from the last 37 years. Credit card rates move in lockstep with the federal funds rate, the benchmark rate the Federal Reserve has been hiking aggressively to stave off runaway inflation.

Higher consumer prices is another culprit behind rising credit card balances, the researchers said, noting the pace of inflation reached a 40-year high last summer.

"Americans have been facing higher prices everywhere...including on purchases they may be putting on their credit cards — at the grocery store, at the gas pump, and for many other types of goods," the researchers wrote in a blog post accompanying the report. "It is possible that increasing prices — and correspondingly, debt service payments — are cutting into borrowers' balance sheets and making it more difficult for them to make ends meet."

The report also showed that more auto loan borrowers are having trouble keeping up with their monthly payments, again especially among younger borrowers. Higher interest rates largely can't be blamed for this increase because most auto loans have fixed rates, the researchers noted. The monthly payments of newer loans, though, are higher, reflecting the run-up in car prices during the pandemic.

The researchers noted that the rise in delinquency levels for both credit cards and auto loans could simply be a "reversion to pre-pandemic" norms now that much of the unprecedented level of government support has run out.

"This leaves us with a critical question though — will these delinquency rates continue to rise, or will they flatten out now?" the researchers wrote.

A lingering concern, they noted, is the ending of the student loan payment pause at the end of June. Younger borrowers, who were more likely last quarter to struggle with making payments, are also more likely to have benefited from the student loan forbearance. What happens when those payments start back up, especially if the Supreme Court overturns President Joe Biden's loan forgiveness?

“There’s no question that the student loan moratorium has been a big deal and has allowed them to really knock down a lot of credit card debt,” Matt Schulz, chief credit analyst for LendingTree, previously told Yahoo Finance. “It’s definitely troubling to think what's going to happen to delinquency rates once everybody has to start making student loan payments again.”

​

 

This has changed my opinion of the man. Thank you.

 

Tesla already said they're opening their network in usa to everyone because they the federal subsidies in the newest climate bill. Companies will do anything for free money

 

Right which is the point. They'll be pushed into the CCS standard by virtue of the fact that they have to open up their network. Their proprietary standard has no value if they can't shield the supercharger network from other EVs.

 

This is what the ftc and obama administration should've done on cell phone accessories when iPhone first came out. They allowed a multi billion dollar accessory market that effed over consumers.

Biden is smart and he's nixing it in the butt at the beginning. Let's have universal chargers and not ridiculous niche ones that only favor corporations.

Corporations are greedy and will look for whatever competitive advantage they can find. Certain folks are pro monopolies and get excited over Corporations screwing over Americans but they're not well. @Space Ghost

 

****. Because of this I'm going to change my entire world views and vote for fascists. Thanks for this important piece of information

 

You actually should't be allowed to vote

 

This post says a lot more about you than it does about Joe Biden.