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Also, I do recognise that their is nothing about a self-consistent belief system which obligates other people to believe in it. Hence the problem in life is that one is always coming across people in positions of power who have belief systems so full of internal inconsistencies that I can only take a few steps around the nearest corner, have a silent laugh, and then return to seeing if we can have a sensible conversation or not. The thing is as these other people are often in positions of power then life becomes very complex as you have to understand the interplay between lots of different belief systems (some of which are rational and self-consistent and some of which are not) in order to predict the future.

In my opinion if CNA want to create shareholder value then they need to find a way of lowering the wholesale cost of electricity and gas in the UK ... there would be little pressure for energy bills to ever decrease as people don't generally feel aggrieved when deflation doesn't happen. Hence if Centrica could find ideas to enable the UK to produce more electricity/gas at a lower cost per unit then they would be able to supply this to customers at a larger profit margin.

This would also save all the hassle of annoying customers by pushing smart meters - i'm sure lots of people don't want smart meters and just want to keep the status quo. So why don't Centrica listen to their customers and tell the government it would be better to focus on reducing wholesale energy prices rather than trying to force smart meters on millions of people who don't want them....which will undoubtedly cause a backlash at the next election. Rightly or wrongly (after the privatisation of water and fall in pension annuities) most people just see smart meters as leading to higher energy bills in the future ...also so that companies can "spy" on their energy use. I don't want to go into the rights or wrongs of this ...but you won't change the perceptions of millions of people within the next few years.

Hence far better for Centrica shareholders if they built some new lower cost power stations and found a few new gas fields in UK waters .... it's what the customers want after all .... to maintain their standard of living ... to cook on gas without it being exclusively for the rich to enjoy this experience .... and to not have to break the bank to wash their clothes in a washing machine and dry them in a tumble drier.

Just my opinions ..... I'm fairly sure gas-fired power plants are quick to build and extremely reliable .... just need to guarantee a long-term gas supply from Quatar, Brazil, USA, Russia or Alaska (part of USA I know). Then job done.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/libya-oil-boss-sees-output-151140899.html

The problem for the shareprices of listed oil companies is that shareholders are unable to stop companies gambling with their shareholders money that the future for oil consumption is positive .... well every politician and green lobbyist is saying that the future for oil consumption is very negative ..... why are shareholders so bad at stopping oil companies frittering away shareholders' capital? Surely it's too risky to invest anymore in new fields ..... time to focus on shareholder returns instead and to focus on cutting costs .... even if Enquest sacked all staff today and just decided to run current fields down (without any future capital expenditure) it would still take six or seven years to pay off all the debts to the banks and bondholders - and that's assuming that the oil price either remains at the current level or increases. Surely that is risk enough?

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/libya-oil-boss-sees-output-151140899.html - Libyan oil production increasing.

That inflation-adjusted oil price data was a nice read. Thanks! However I'm now more bemused than ever how the politicians can spout their nonsense on TV when in fact companies are behaving fairly rationally in that if the price is right they are going to push ahead with new oil projects .... despite the fact politicians reckon petrol/diesel cars will be banned by 2040 if not far sooner.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/libya-oil-boss-sees-output-151140899.html

BP working hard in Libya apparently

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/libya-oil-boss-sees-output-151140899.html

Still think Europe has more going for it than the UK...far lower population density...only a 35-hour work week in France...better infrastructure...cheaper electricity....less-stressed people/better work-life balance....better weather.....better wine.....roads generally in a better condition....trains much cheaper and more reliable ... only bad thing about Europe for business is that there are more workers rights....but technology/automation is going to enable more to be done with less anyway....so actually these workers right will stop business from becoming so efficient that nobody has any money to purchase their products. Can't help but think the mentality in the UK won't lead to long-term good outcomes....people here believe that working long hours is a good thing....just shows a very strange mentality...offering employees a good work-life balance, and increasing productivity through technology, is far more likely to keep a company stable. What's the point of working all hours now that a house can be built in a few days (well you see a hundred houses go up in less than 6 months due to modern equipment). Also what's the point of always making financial efficiency a top priority for businesses if the unemployment rate then increases and future demand for their products drops due to affordability?

In my view social change is coming and it will affect businesses and everything...don't know when....don't know how sudden or how sweeping ...but rationally one can see that it is coming....the UK will probably end up more like mainland Europe ...stronger employment laws including a 35-hour maximum working week...better protection for pensions....increase in the minimum wage .... and a greater focus on lifestyles and work-life balances as a measure of how well one is doing in life. Probably spending on education and healthcare will increase in the UK to bring the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare more inline with that of Germany. Also more needs to be spent on education because it's the spread of ideas which really lead to a stronger economy .... just like the belief that technology coupled with higher investment into oil production, (eventually leading to lower oil prices which finally arrived in 2014), could revitalise the American economy post the financial crisis - which largely turned out to be the case from what one reads.

Anyway the government doesn't earn big bucks - and it doesn't directly deal with economic projects which are managed by companies. So all it can really focus on is what does it think a healthier (not just physically but in every aspect including stress and lifestyles) economy would look like? And to me I'd say the European ideas regarding worker rights and maximum working weeks, and generally promoting good work-life balance, would be quite appealing to the UK population as a whole....I hope Jeremy Corbyn is taking note! The private sector has largely failed I think the Conservatives are discovering ..possibly

Well regardless, the pound has fallen from $1.65 against the dollar to $1.30 against the dollar - taking a relatively long average (since 2005, ending now).

So regardless of Brexit it seems the economic policy makers in the background have had a plan .... judging by the long-term trends in currency markets. Basically the plan was that the UK was to become vastly poorer - as if breaking RBS, Barclays and Lloyds wasn't enough the decline of the pound has just made people who held their wealth mainly in pounds even poorer. I guess this was out of any one single person's control. However it does indicate that America and the Euro area were always more socially/politically integrated and stable than the UK. They were basically able just to use RBS as a cash cow - taking bets off UK banks which the US/Euro counterparties had a 90% chance of winning and all the UK government has been able to do is to gradually manage the UK becoming poorer during a decade when both the USA and Europe have economically prospered. I guess all that Rule Britannia nonsense and Tony Blair's big head was a bit too galling for the smart money in the USA - they well and truly stitched up the UK taxpayer properly once they realised how the UK's entire future wealth had been entrusted to arrogant/foolish bankers to manage....fortunately for America/Europe they had a stronger belief in the tech sector and not betting the house on greedy short-term bankers. The tech bets came really good ... result.... USA and Europe the winners and the UK the massive loser. Oh yeah...UK bankers too obsessed with property as well...probably as UK a small country where land is limited...people in vast continents like USA/Europe would be far less likely to have confused house price growth with real economic growth ...hence they were able to see that the UK bankers were barking mad and relieved them of a lot of pounds Sterling with a few smart financial schemes - such as packaging up toxic mortgage debt and selling it as prime AAA rated debt. But only foolish bankers obsessed with property would ever have bet all of their shareholders capital on such debt anyway....how they ignored companies like Facebook/Apple/Google and didn't buy shares in them again ...perhaps because UK is a small country the benefits of technology to business in terms of saving money on travel/fuel costs (and just in terms of saving time in face-to-face meetings) were not recognised until these companies had all the investors they needed (mainly American money).

The price of what? The price of MMT will be that some people who made a mint off the response to the 2007/08 crisis will not like it....because currently they want to "win forever" just because they made one or two good decisions during the global financial crisis. However, the benefits if implementing MMT are numerous..... namely that we can ditch the "winners forever" mentality that the people who bought heavily in 2008-2010 and then sold from 2011-2013 have. These people made so much money that if austerity continue they will have won for the next 50 years just from making a few good decisions at a time when there was a general mood of panic amongst the policymakers who were making many errors about how financial incentives really worked at the time.

The price of Barclays would undoubtedly start to rise once MMT was implemented ... I mean if there is growth in the "real economy" then eventually this will flow through to financial assets and markets. I personally think the mistake of policymakers was to think they should reward the financial asset holders first and then that would create genuine growth in the "real world". Ultimately people who hold financial assets just like to see their wealth ever increasing .... the trickle down effect is incredibly small. Hence why the FED had to print $4 Trillion just to boost GDP by 1% a year for a few years. If they'd actually pumped half a trillion in dollars in cash into the real economy directly through higher wages and bonus schemes for achieving targets regarding building new hospitals, resurfacing roads, replacing rolling stock, and creating sustainable forestation projects, and directly to entrepreneurs setting up local food production and manufacturing business then probably GDP growth would have been boosted by 10% per year rather than 1%.

Just my opinions...but never a believer in the trickle down effect....and the financial experiment from 2008 onwards has only confirmed in reality that financial asset holders only want ever increasing wealth and not to spend the money on creating actual businesses which employ people.

On the other hand the reverse has never been tested yet ..., that stimulating the real economy will a few years later feed through into asset prices/financial assets and create a positive feedback loop between financial assets and real economic growth in terms of jobs/businesses. However, given the failure of "trickle down" policies I think Central Banks could easily make the case for testing the opposite hypothesis ...that by stimulating the real economy directly (with true helicopter money as Ben Bernanke described it) that this would create positive feedback loops of business creation/employment and eventually this would boost markets and financial assets as well.

And just imagine trying to drive a Landrover in flip-flops. No dread_duck...just wouldn't work at all. Need decent shoes and decent cars and decent staff....then can live in heaven on Earth.

But you can't go for a decent walk in the countryside in flip-flops (with or without avocado stains). Just sayin' dread-duck.

Hi Whiteace,

The trouble is all other oil companies are increasing their production whilst Enquest, "sort of their problems". Look at production profiles and capex plans for Chevron, BP, Exxon, GKP, Genel, DNO, ConocoPhilips, Apache, AkerBP, Lundin Petroleum, Rosneft...even Saudi Aramco have discovered some new offshore fields and could increase production by another 2 million bopd over the next few years...Occidental has hit a rich area in the Permian and their new shale wells are producing as much as many conventional wells...circa 3,000 bopd. Nobody is reigning in spending in the oil industry...everyone is looking for lost cost resources and to develop these asap...their belief system is that they can't control the low prices...nor the investor anger at declining share prices....but they may be able to put a competitor out of business if they can only develop their next greenfield project in record speed and at record low cost...this seems to be the thinking .... none of the listed companies are responding to low oil prices by cutting back on production because everyone is thinking they will only lose market share. Right or wrong the majority response is to find bigger fields and to develop them quicker and cheaper to undercut other listed oil companies on price...no wonder shareholders in this sector are seeing so much value destruction because none of this behaviour (nor the low oil price) is changing the austerity policies of governments...nor the constant green agenda being spouted by the media which is encouraging every "real world" business to switch to solar/windpower asap and to use smaller engined vehicles and to generally move away from oil as fast as possible with regard to the wider impact on employment or the economy.

Re Dodgepot,

Even a 5p dividend would send the right message that the company would like to start enabling long-term shareholders (without which the company would not exist) to start to see a return on their investment.

Many companies pay dividends which are just token amounts but it does at least send the right message that the management cares about the investors who have created the company and employed the directors/management/employees.

And I don't think 5p is a token amount - it's actually a decent amount to begin with and can be increased by a lot fairly quickly which keeps investors and management in a positive feedback loop of each party being pleased with the other. It's far nicer to announce an 80% increase in the dividend than an 8% one ... especially when an 80% increase per year would be eminently affordable by Genel over the next 3 or 4 years. Once the dividend reaches about 32p per year then it may have to increase more gradually for a few years...before being ramped up again to reflect the rapid rate of value creation that a good solid oil company can naturally deliver with equitable treatment of all stakeholders.

This makes a lot of sense ... if you've just retired or are about to retire with a decent pension then who is going to resurface the roads of renew the railroads...or maintain the electricity systems? Personally I think MMT will be the only way to pay for all the structural work that's going to be required from 2020-2040 to maintain and improve all of the existing infrastructure which is an essential part of every modern economy. And that's without considering the economic benefits that would come from building new infrastructure during those years. Or people could just accept a decaying infrastructure and general downward spiral of infrastructure and services. But for all those that have retired on good pensions why wouldn't you want freshly surfaced roads to drive on, why wouldn't you want new trains very 15-20 years at most, why wouldn't you want damns properly inspected, maintained, and hydroelectric capabilities upgraded, and why wouldn't you want an expansion of the existing utility networks so that you can have a holiday home in the country that's actually connected to the grid and served by decent roads? And I can't really think of a better way of achieving that other by implementing modern monetary theory.

In a research note titled "The age of rage, what populism means for markets", Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should "to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead", Every warned.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/valid-voodoo-monetary-theory-may-appeal-europes-age-071342673--business.html

I do believe BP are ahead of the game regarding MMT. The previous investments of BP - when everyone was saying not to invest in new "greenfield" oilfields - are now much required by the global economy. And companies which tried to stifle investment in new fields at an industry-wide level, such as Exxon, have found that Chevron and BP were right all along. That just because a few people spout endlessly on the media about climate change does not mean this either this is a real threat, nor that there is anyway to replace oil usage and keep the economy going without developing new oil fields. I don't expect Exxon will ever apologise for the huge damage they have inflicted on the economy and people's standard of living just so they could side with 0.0001% of people who fervently believe climate change is more important than providing medicines to the lower middle classes in India and China. However I do believe that Exxon have now seen who was right regarding the "big picture" and that they will race to place catch up.... rapidly developing fields offshore Papua New Guinea and Guyana...as well as in the Permian Basin and Gulf of Mexico. All the same investors in Exxon have lost out from the fact the senior management cared more about themselves and following nutty beliefs popular in the media rather than about the people who had created the company over the past century (the shareholders).

Anyway I do have to praise BP for their foresight .... it's almost as though they could foresee MMT happening from 2020 onwards when they decided in 2011 to press ahead with developing a swathe of new fields across the globe. So well done BP. And now if MMT is implemented from 2020 onwards - which is the only realistic monetary policy that could pay for a decent standard of living for the rising number of retirees per year from 2025 onwards - then BP couldn't really have timed their investments into new greenfield projects any better ... so credit where credit is due....

In a research note titled "The age of rage, what populism means for markets", Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should "to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead", Every warned.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/valid-voodoo-monetary-theory-may-appeal-europes-age-071342673--business.html

In a research note titled "The age of rage, what populism means for markets", Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should "to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead", Every warned.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/valid-voodoo-monetary-theory-may-appeal-europes-age-071342673--business.html

WorldGoAround, forgive me as I would love to see this go back to £4 and for you to get your money back, and as a bonus to also have gained some wisdom through the process. But really if you want true peace of mind .... you need to create a completely rational belief system .... not thinking that either privatisation or nationalisation are good things in and of themselves. Neither privatisation, nor nationalisation, when you truly think about it can create smooth economic growth. Once you have found a rational belief system that can create smooth economic growth then invest in the companies which are most aligned with that same belief system...well that's my thinking for what it's worth....otherwise you are just a short-termer looking for a quick buck...and your world will be full of other short-termers also looking for a quick buck... so sooner or later you will find their is no trust. I do believe that I have create a completely rational belief system which can have smooth economic growth for hundreds if not thousands of years...so my world is a very nice place to live .... hopefully I'll see you in my world one day ....

In a research note titled "The age of rage, what populism means for markets", Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should "to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead", Every warned.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/valid-voodoo-monetary-theory-may-appeal-europes-age-071342673--business.html

In a research note titled "The age of rage, what populism means for markets", Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should "to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead", Every warned.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/valid-voodoo-monetary-theory-may-appeal-europes-age-071342673--business.html

In a research note titled "The age of rage, what populism means for markets", Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should "to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead", Every warned.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/valid-voodoo-monetary-theory-may-appeal-europes-age-071342673--business.html

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/valid-voodoo-monetary-theory-may-appeal-europes-age-071342673--business.html

In a research note titled "The age of rage, what populism means for markets", Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should "to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead", Every warned.

In a research note titled "The age of rage, what populism means for markets", Rabobank market strategist Michael Every said investors should expect populist parties to use MMT to bolster their calls for higher public spending.

Markets should "to prepare for a far higher risk of truly paradigmatic shifts ahead", Every warned.

https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/valid-voodoo-monetary-theory-may-appeal-europes-age-071342673--business.html

Why do people here discuss politics when this is a Lloyds investor forum?

Surely the most important fact is that from 2007-2017 the national debt increased from 40% of GDP to over 80%. And during the same period the Bank of England injected £435 Billion of freshly created money (not backed by any new assets) into the economy. No wonder this massively raised the price of all existing assets within the economy as well as price rises in energy and food (because this new money was only competing for existing assets).

Surely the question which is most puzzling is how, (despite the doubling in the national debt and the £435 Billion of new money from the Bank of England), is the Lloyds' share price still at 65p - the same level as it was at back in 2010?

Why no increase in the value of Lloyds' shares despite all of the loose monetary policy and increase in National Debt and new money (created without being backed by hard assets) by the Bank of England?