Greenspan: Bonds Are in a Bubble, Stagflation Is Coming

[odysseus2000]

UK infrastructure is an interesting subject.

On one hand I can empathise with FredBloggs, but on the other hand I can’t. If the UK was grid locked and headed to third world status then one would expect to see symptoms like long delays for mail, parcels, huge queues at airports, dropping off in overseas visitors, steep falls in London property, failing private Schools as foreign parents declined to send their children here for their education.

In reality I have never known packages come so quickly. Often things I buy are here the next day or the day after. The vans are always full of stuff and the drivers say they are super busy. There are loads of foreign tourists all over the place, likely enjoying the weak pound. Heathrow coped with the massive olympic traffic a few years back. London housing is still booming as are private Schools. Folk are living longer and prosperity is the highest it has ever been.

Meanwhile many countries have spent a lot of money (this means raising a lot of taxes) building new airports, new railways and nuclear power plants and the folk who look at these things feel this is evidence of their emergence as first world nations. The problem with a lot of this is that what is being built is rapidly going out of date.

The UK lead the world in nuclear power and then folk looked at the cost of the power and we mostly gave it up. Good move as the coming revolutions in renewables, smart grid and batteries are much more cost effective and much more secure. A nuclear reactor can be a blessing but it is also a magnet for terrorists and hostile nations and the clean up of the spent fuel is a very expensive business.

The UK lead the world in railways but that began over 180 years ago, many things have changed. Electrification via overhead lines is out of date due to improving batteries, autonomous road transport, drones and likely soon hyper-loop technology.

Airports are now likely as big as they are ever going to get and with electric propulsion for at least short haul with vertical take-off the needs for lots of runways decreases and with hyperloop technology one may see many declines in air transport as hyper loops will be more direct and faster.

The pitfalls of investing in old technology are that it will be replaced by new stuff and the art is more about keeping old infrastructure going for as long as possible and then upgrading when something better, faster and cheaper comes along. The UK is exceptionally well positioned for that.

Regards,

[Itsallaguess]

A nuclear reactor can be a blessing but it is also a magnet for terrorists and hostile nations and the clean up of the spent fuel is a very expensive business.

The UK lead the world in railways but that began over 180 years ago, many things have changed. Electrification via overhead lines is out of date due to improving batteries, autonomous road transport, drones and likely soon hyper-loop technology.

Because autonomous road-transport, properly-useful drones and a hyper-loop would never become a 'magnet for terrorists'....

Itsallaguess

[odysseus2000]

itsallaguess

Because autonomous road-transport, properly-useful drones and a hyper-loop would never become a 'magnet for terrorists'....

Sure they can, but it's the after effect. If a nuclear reactor containment is broken there are serious, expensive & long term consequences as seen in Chernobyl, Japan with narrow escapes for three mile island & our own Windscale fire where it was only filters on the chimneys that spurred us a major disaster. If God forbid a disaster occurs here we are particularly vulnerable due to the small land area & high population disaster. By contrast hacks into autominous road transport, drones, hyper-loop would be serious, but unlikely long term expensive & disasterous as would be the case if say a reactor is broken open by terrorist or a projectile or directed energy attack from space by a hostile state.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Hi FredBloggs,

What has happened as seen through your observations has been a remarkable increase in world prosperity. Countries that were very backwards have developed greatly and although there are still many folk who live in poverty, the trend is for rising quality of life everywhere.

However, with this Great Leap Forward in the average has there been a corresponding decline into poverty in the U.K.? Many folk believe so, but I do not see it. Sure one can cite the increased population density, the loss of farm land and the decline of some species, but meanwhile medical treatments are extraordinary: hips are replaced, some cancers are cured, cataracts are defeated... UK military are strong, we remain a major defensive supplier. We have many universities (maybe too many) etc we developed the Raspberry Pi computer creating a generation skilled in coding, necessary skills for the comming decades. London remains a major centre of commerce. We create entrepreneurs, we prosper & the GDP advances, it does not relentlessly decline. We have our own currency & we cover our interest payments and although debt relentlessly advances, assets grow faster. Recently the UK took the decision to leave Europe giving the opportunity to do more business with the developing & newly developed nations. Folk cite this as a disaster, but the new chapter has hardly begun, it is too early to know. However, the decision has been made & we either roll over or make a success of it. I believe it will be the latter.

There is also something else that is more difficult to quantify but which is nevertheless real and powerful and that is the UK character, whether many generations old mongrels of many nations or recent immigrants. I have & continue to work with nationals from many nations & there is something about the UK national that is rarely duplicated in other nationals. We are relentless moaners & complainers & that stops many of us reaching our full potential, but enough do and when we have to do something we do. Whether this be feats of arms, or sporting success in the recent U.K. Olympics etc we somehow, well excluding football, rise to the challenge & do well.

Regards,

[Mapfumo]

Alright, how about all the new airports we built in the last 70 years. Nope, got me there too.

London is the world's biggest air passenger hub - approaching 140 million passengers per year across its airports.

Stansted is new - mostly built in the late eighties/early nineties. It's the 4th busiest passenger airport in the UK and the third busiest freight airport (East Midlands is second - massive recent development of freight terminals there).

[GoSeigen]

@odysseus2000, most of what you say is undoubtedly at least partly true and some is very true.

But point me to all the new mainline railways that were built in the last 100 years. Oops, we have none. Show me the state of the art high speed railways, after all, we invented the railways. Oops we don't have any.

OK then, show me our world leading telecommunications infrastructure. We led the world in that too in Victorian times. - Mmm, we haven't got one.

Alright, how about all the new airports we built in the last 70 years. Nope, got me there too.

Right then, how about plans to create the great northern power house to leverage and unlock the undoubted latent economic synergies that exist between our great northern conurbations. Hmmmm, just a politicians dream. No need to go on about it any more. Two sides of the same coin.

The above basically says that "the Uk hasn't built all the things it hasn't built" by excluding everything contradictary with judicious wording. If you look at the reality, things are rather different. To pick on one -- airports:

-70 years ago Heathrow had no Terminals, just a tented village; today it has five terminals.
-Gatwick had a rudimentary Terminal "the Beehive", today it has two terminals handling 40m passengers per year.
-Other aiports were provincial airfields with few scheduduled flights. Today, there are major international terminals at City Airport, Luton, Stansted and Southend.

And that's just London! There are today international Airports in Southampton, Bristol, Birmingham, East Midlands, Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle, perhaps others, not to mention Wales, Scotland and NI which have multiple international airports.

So the idea that no new airports were built in the last 70 years is just nonsense, and fairly similar with the other claims [motorways obviously have replaced railways, but still we have Eurostar, the Channel Tunnel, Crossrail, new London underground lines, etc. etc.]. How could the UK economy have grown several-fold in real terms without corresponding infrastructure growth?!

Or did I miss some sarcasm in the post?

GS

[TUK020]

Yes, but aside from all that, what have the Romans done for us?

[richfool]

Yes, but aside from all that, what have the Romans done for us?

Well, sewers and roads.

The first are collapsing and in desparate need of repair, and the second are inundated & overwhelmed by traffic.

We need to keep working on keeping our infrastructure up to date. It's an ongoing requirement (and a rapidly changing world).

[OLTB]

The first are collapsing and in desparate need of repair, and the second are inundated & overwhelmed by traffic.

We need to keep working on keeping our infrastructure up to date. It's an ongoing requirement (and a rapidly changing world).

Perhaps Carillion could be bought in to help

Cheers, OLTB.

[odysseus2000]

To give an idea of UK infrastructure efficiency,

I ordered some electronic components from digikey in the US last Friday around mid day, the 11th of August.

They arrived yesterday, 14 August at around 9:30 am.

The cost for this basic service was £12.

I have never known things come so quickly.

The oft quoted belief that the UK is seized up, the infra structure broken does not square with my experience. In my practical use of UK transport infrastructure I find it has never been has efficient & useful as it is now.

Regards,