On Thursday, St. Louis Fed President James Bullard sparked a slide in risk assets after he said policy makers should raise interest rates to at least 5% to 5.25% to curb the highest inflation in nearly 40 years. Meanwhile, as Bloomberg’s Vincent Cignarella writes this morning, crude futures point to a recession, lower inflation expectations and a Fed soon to be on hold.

With winter approaching one would expect energy prices to be rising but that is not the case. Across the complex they are falling, even gasoline futures, and that is with the holiday driving season approaching.

As Cignarella observes, the reasons seem all too clear: dropping demand for energy leads consumer inflation expectations. Despite the Fed’s warnings, consumers believe inflation is slowing. For risk markets that should mean a healthy environment for bond bulls and dollar bears. For equities, it’s a bit muddy. Lower rates generally mean higher stocks but slower spending will mean lower earnings so choose your sectors wisely; not all will gain as rates fall.

And in keeping with the coming recession, the market is starting to notice, and as Bloomberg’s Edward Bollingbroke points out, a standout trade over the US morning session has been a stream of buying in SOFR September 2023 options, an upside play targeting a drastic Fed pivot to a 2% rate by September next year vs. the approximately 4.9% currently priced into the swaps market.

Citing a US trader, Bollingbroke notes that during the session, there has been constant buying in 40,000 SOFR Sep23 97.00/98.00 call spread between 4.25 and 4.5 by combination of block and pit flow. Open interest in the strikes sits at 35,680 (98.00) and 31,831 (97.00), consistent with a new position which expires Sept. 15 2023, week before the Sept. 20 policy decision.

The premium paid was approximately $4.5 million, and targets a policy rate around 2% by options expiry; for context, the Fed-dated OIS currently prices in a policy rate of around 4.9% for the September meeting next year, almost 300bp above options target.

In other words, someone is not only betting on a pivot, but a huge pivot.

Considering that the overwhelmingly consensus trade now is that the Fed won’t be cutting any time in 2023 – just like it was anathema to even suggest a rate hike in 2022 one year ago – we have a feeling that this will be an extremely profitable trade less than a year from today.

By Michael Every of Rabobank

Same Ship, Different Day

Last year, we published a report called ‘In Deep Ship’, which argued: supply chains were breaking down for a number of reasons, not just excess demand; this process would continue until a downturn; but politics and geopolitics meant even that would just provide a pause, not a structural reversal. The deeper I dug, the more I was personally convinced inflation wasn’t transitory, and that rates would have to go up and stay up.

Today it’s a case of same ship, different day. Ocean freight rates on many, but not all, routes are tumbling due to a looming downturn. Yet politics and geopolitics are still showing inflation is not transitory, even if it may have peaked, and central bankers are saying rates will have to go up further and stay up.

The Fed’s Bullard could not have been more hawkish yesterday. Not only did he shrug off weak data and say rates should go to 5.00% – 5.25%, but he made clear this was the lowest level they should sit at. Indeed, he suggested they might need to go as high as 7% using the Taylor Rule.  True, there are doves like Brainard lobbying for pivots too. However, the real world outside of short-term economic data backs the Bullard view more than Brainard:  

• Russia, Ukraine, Turkey and the UN have agreed an extension of the Black Sea Grain Deal – wheat prices are lower as a result. However, an Israeli tanker was just attacked by an Iranian drone. More such events will raise the cost of global ocean freight, or make it less viable, as the Black Sea route was before the Grain Deal.

• Turkey is demanding all oil shippers passing through the Bosporus show insurance from December 1, which could restrict flows of Russian oil ahead of new EU sanctions.

• Prices for LNG ships have soared, with only the recent warm autumn weather, now being reversed in the US, providing any temporary respite.

• As re-/friend-shoring from China, despite kumbayanik dreams, will see a surge in demand on second-tier carrier routes that can only use smaller vessels, and declining demand on existing routes between mega-ports using the largest ships (which we dubbed ‘too big to sail’ last year). That will mean inflation and deflation in carrier rates simultaneously.

• Ocean carriers are responding to a collapse in freight demand with blank sailings and scrapping older vessels – supply destruction to match demand destruction; which is why the White House has the industry in its crosshairs as a cartel.

• Plans for national ocean carriers as fall-backs are still proceeding in several economies, arguably the only viable solution given breaking carrier alliances up would not make things cheaper in isolation. There are urgent calls for the US to ‘go back to the sea’ too to ensure its military sealift capacity, without which it can no longer be considered a Superpower.

• In Australia, regulators ruled tugboat workers could not be locked out by their employer from today as it would cause too much damage to the economy: the ripple effect of how close we came to such a development is seeing their supply chains disrupted today anyway.

• In the US, a rail strike is still possible: the American Chemistry Council warns a one-month strike could result in 700,000 lost jobs, a 4ppt spike in US PPI, and a 1ppt drag on GDP, while a two-month strike would mean PPI up 12ppts and GDP down 2ppts. And how does one resolve strike action from key workers on tugboats or railways? Large pay rises ahoy!

• The low Mississippi and Rhine underline key rivers can no longer be relied on.

It may not float your boat, but the supply side is still inflationary medium to longer term, not just short term as yield curves suggest. That is before Europe is deindustrialised by higher energy prices. Moreover, the Pentagon says it now understands the real lesson from Ukraine is the need for “production”, as legislation calling for massive increases in US weapon stocks sits before Congress. Once the real power-players wake up to the fact that supply/production is all that matters, then we end up with really inflationary shifts in supply/production. That’s true even if an infinite supply of economists and Wall Street analysts say this can’t happen “because markets”.

Higher rates are hence needed for several reasons.

• First, to clamp down on excess demand and asset bubbles – job underway.

• Second, to anchor the US dollar during this transition. Recall oil maven Anas Alhajji stresses the oft-overlooked fact that a key part of the post-1973 ‘petrodollar’ deal with Arab oil producers was the US promise to provide them with a decent, safe return for their oil revenues – which is part of the reason why US rates went up. This may no longer apply to OPEC+ today, but the same dynamic holds true vs. muttering of potential dollar rivals backed by commodities. Try pivoting and see what happens alongside structural supply-side inflation pressures! The inverse is to note the power the dollar wields as rates rise – Fed swap lines become geopolitical life-lines.

Indeed, what’s the alternative pivoters are actually offering now from a bigger picture perspective? Bankman-Fried polyamorous Harry Potter Bahamian frauds exceeding that of Enron? More bubble gibberish for the likes of Masayoshi Son to waste billions on investing in?

Most foreign investors want a decent, safe return from Fed Funds; and the Pentagon wants a decent, safe return from US industry that keeps the US decent and safe.

On the surface things may look the same, but actually it’s a case of same ship, different day; or very different ship from what Wall Street has been sailing us for years.  

But there are always slow learners – the UK, for example. Fresh after trying Thatcherite tax cuts on steroids, Blighty is about to try austerity on steroids. Chancellor Hunt’s budget will slash spending for years, take taxes to the highest level in decades, and allow energy bills to soar, smashing consumers. Hunt promises “Scandinavian quality with Singaporean efficiency” as taxes hit Scandinavian levels without any sign of Singaporean outcomes, let alone support for public housing, transport, and cheap, delicious hawker centres. So, “British delusion” or “British irony”? Apparently, this is ‘what the market wants’ – just not voters: I struggle to think of a UK constituency, and I mean that figuratively and literally, who will back this budget.

The greatest irony is that if the Fed does go to 7% because ‘same ship, different day’, then the Bank of England and Britannia will almost certainly be forced to keep pace with it anyway – so what’s the point?

But I find myself asking that question with depressing frequency given so many in markets ignore all the above and busily rearrange deckchairs on the Titanic every day.

While everyone is fixated on the disgraced founder of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, and his collapsed cryptocurrency exchange, another Silicon Valley fraudster, Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, will be sentenced in a federal courthouse Friday, putting an end to the years-long saga of her phony blood-testing startup. 

Holmes’ sentencing will take place in a San Jose, California, courtroom where she was convicted earlier this year of three felony counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud for scamming investors. 

Federal prosecutors wrote in court papers ahead of the sentencing hearing that Holmes’ crimes are “among the most substantial white-collar offenses Silicon Valley, or any other district, has seen” (wait until SBF’s court case…). 

AP noted US District Judge Edward Davila could sentence Holmes to federal prison for 15 years, slightly less than the federal government’s recommendation of 20 years, though her lawyers filed a request to the judge last week for leniency in the sentencing and requested 18 months of home confinement instead of prison. 

The request was accompanied by letters calling for leniency from over 130 friends, family, and even Theranos investors, as well as former company employees who described Holmes as a ‘good person.’ 

One of those letters was penned by Sen. Cory Booker (D., NJ), who said Holmes “has within her a sincere desire to help others” by fighting climate change and world hunger.

“I knew Ms. Holmes for about six years before charges were brought,” he continued. 

… and how convenient:

“Holmes, who is 38 years old, was visibly pregnant with her second child at her last court appearance. If Davila hands down a prison sentence, her pregnancy could influence when her confinement starts,” NPR pointed out. 

Judge Davila has handled her case since the collapse of Theranos after reaching a valuation of $9 billion. Criminal defense lawyers recently told Bloomberg Holmes’ sentencing could send a warning shot to Silicon Valley companies that run on hopes and dreams. 

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The EPoch Times,

The Biden administration on Thursday suggested that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman be granted immunity from a lawsuit filed against him over the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

In a court filing, the administration noted the crown prince’s appointment as prime minister in September, which they said made him “the sitting head of government of a foreign state.”

“Under common law principles of immunity articulated by the Executive Branch in the exercise of its Constitutional authority over foreign affairs and informed by customary international law, Prime Minister Bin Salman as a sitting head of government is immune while in office from the jurisdiction of the United States District Court in this suit,” the court filing reads.

The filing noted, however, that the Biden administration, in making the immunity determination, takes “no view on the merits of the present suit and reiterates its unequivocal condemnation of the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”

Ultimately, a judge will have the final say on whether or not to grant immunity to the crown prince.

Thursday’s filing is the result of a lawsuit filed by Khashoggi’s fiancée, Hatice Cengiz, and the rights group Khashoggi founded, Democracy for the Arab World Now.

On Twitter, Cengiz took aim at the Biden administration’s immunity request, saying that by doing so, the U.S. government has “saved the murderer” and that the president, has “saved the criminal and got involved in the crime himself.”

“The United States state department has granted immunity to #MBS. It wasn’t a decision everyone expected. We thought maybe there would be a light to justice from #USA But again, money came first.” she wrote.

In a follow-up post, the human rights activists declared that “Jamal died again today.”

People hold posters of slain Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, near the Saudi Arabia consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, on Oct. 2, 2020. (Emrah Gurel/AP Photo)

U-Turn for Biden

Biden’s decision marks a stark U-turn from his previous stance on former Washington Post columnist Khashoggi’s 2018 killing inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

The U.S. intelligence community has tied the death to the crown prince, who they believe approved the killing, although Khashoggi’s remains have never been found.

Khashoggi was an outspoken critic of the Saudi government, which has repeatedly come under fire from human rights organizations and United Nations bodies over its human rights violations and laws that restrict political and religious expression, including its silencing of individuals it considers rivals or critics.

However, officials in the country have rejected any links to the crown prince and Khashoggi’s death and denied accusations of human rights abuses.

Earlier this year, Biden faced criticism after he opted to share a fist bump with the crown prince during a visit to the Gulf kingdom as he sought to persuade Saudi Arabia to produce more oil amid soaring gas prices in the United States.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its oil-producing allies, OPEC+, agreed to slash their oil output just weeks later.

A State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Axios that the Justice Department filed what it called the “suggestion of immunity,” at the request of the State Department, “based on longstanding and well-established principles” of law, including international law “which the United States has consistently and across administrations applied to heads of state, heads of government, and foreign ministers while they are in office.”

“This Suggestion of Immunity does not reflect an assessment on the merits of the case. It speaks to nothing on broader policy or the state of relations. This was purely a legal determination,” the spokesperson said.

The Epoch Times has contacted the State Department for comment.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a memo shared with employees and published on the company’s website that layoffs will continue through early 2023, indicating the souring macroeconomic backdrop has put the company in a “challenging spot” after years of “rapid hiring.” 

“Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments. Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023,” Jassy wrote in the memo. 

He continued: “Amazon has weathered uncertainty and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so.” 

Earlier this week, NYTimes published a report that America’s second-largest employer [Amazon] is preparing to cut 10,000 jobs in its retail division and human resources segments. 

Jassy didn’t say how many employees will get fired early next year but did point out there will be “reductions in our Stores and [People, Experience, and Technology] organizations.” 

“We haven’t concluded yet exactly how many other roles will be impacted (we know that there will be reductions in our Stores and PXT organizations), but each leader will communicate to their respective teams when we have the details nailed down.” 

Amazon’s announcement comes after a massive surge in tech layoffs this month (conveniently after the midterm elections). Notice momentum in layoffs is rapidly accelerating. 

We should also note the story count for articles across the internet about job cuts, firings, and layoffs has just spiked to the highest levels since 2014/15. This may indicate trouble ahead for the economy and a possible peak in treasury yields. 

Here’s Jassy’s memo to staff and the public about layoffs continuing through early next year:

Two weeks ago, Beth shared that S-team and I decided to pause new incremental hires in our corporate workforce. Today, I want to share some information about role eliminations. We are in the middle of our annual operating planning review where we look at each of our businesses and make decisions about what we believe we should change. Leaders across the company are working with their teams and looking at their workforce levels, investments they want to make in the future, and prioritizing what matters most to customers and the long-term health of our businesses. This year’s review is more difficult due to the fact that the economy remains in a challenging spot and we’ve hired rapidly the last several years.

Yesterday, we communicated the difficult decision to eliminate a number of positions across our Devices and Books businesses, and also announced a voluntary reduction offer for some employees in our People, Experience, and Technology (PXT) organization. Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments. Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023. We haven’t concluded yet exactly how many other roles will be impacted (we know that there will be reductions in our Stores and PXT organizations), but each leader will communicate to their respective teams when we have the details nailed down. And, as has been the case this week, we will prioritize communicating directly with impacted employees before making broad public or internal announcements.

I’ve been in this role now for about a year and a half, and without a doubt, this is the most difficult decision we’ve made during that time (and, we’ve had to make some very tough calls over the past couple of years, particularly during the heart of the pandemic). It’s not lost on me or any of the leaders who make these decisions that these aren’t just roles we’re eliminating, but rather, people with emotions, ambitions, and responsibilities whose lives will be impacted. We are working to support those who are affected and trying to help them find new roles on teams that have a need; and in cases where that’s not possible, we are offering packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, and external job placement support.

Amazon has weathered uncertainty and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so. We have big opportunities ahead, both in our more established businesses like Stores, Advertising, and AWS, but also in our newer initiatives that we’ve been working on for a number of years and have conviction in pursuing (e.g. Prime Video, Alexa, Kuiper, Zoox, and Healthcare). The key will be to do what Amazon does best – obsess over customers and invent relentlessly on their behalf – and if we do that, we should all be very optimistic about Amazon’s future. I know I am.

I want to thank each of you for your continuing contributions during this challenging time and as we gear up to deliver for customers during the busy shopping season.

Thanks,

Andy

Authored by Charles Kennedy via OilPrice.com,

The UK is raising the windfall tax on the profits of oil and gas operators in the North Sea while also expanding the tax to include low-cost electricity generators in the Autumn Statement of the UK’s budget unveiled by the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, on Thursday.

The UK has had a windfall tax on oil and gas firms operating in the North Sea since May, when the current Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, then Boris Johnson’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced a temporary 25% Energy Profits Levy for oil and gas companies, reflecting their extraordinary profits as oil and gas prices surged.

Commenting on the new budget measures, Sunak said today that “Today’s Autumn Statement delivers the long-term stability this country needs.”

“The Autumn Statement sets out reforms to ensure businesses in the energy sector who are making extraordinary profits contribute more,” the UK government said.

Thus, the UK is raising the Energy Profits Levy by 10 percentage points to 35% from January 1, 2023, and is extending it to the end of March 2028, from December 31, 2025, as originally planned when the levy was 25%.

The government expects the Energy Profits Levy to raise over £40 billion by 2027-28.

The hike in the levy lifts total oil and gas taxation in the UK to a grand total of 75%, Bloomberg’s energy and commodities columnist Javier Blas noted.

The government is also introducing a new temporary 45% Electricity Generator Levy that will be applied to the extraordinary returns being made by electricity generators. The levy will be introduced from January 1, 2023, and is then forecast to raise around £14.2 billion over the forecast period (2022- 2028). The levy will be applied to groups generating electricity from nuclear, renewable, and biomass sources “who are benefitting from a significant increase in the price received for their output without a corresponding increase in the costs of generation.”

Oil and gas firms and power producers have warned the government for weeks that what was then rumored hikes in windfall taxes would undermine investment in the UK energy system.

“Imposing sudden extra taxes will make it even harder for these companies to invest in UK energy production – both the gas and oil we need today, and the wind, hydrogen and other low-carbon energies we need to reach net zero by 2050,” leading industry group Offshore Energies UK said earlier this month.

Linda Cook, CEO at the leading independent oil and gas producer in the North Sea, Harbour Energy, wrote an open letter to the Chancellor earlier this week, saying that “Should the chancellor levy UK oil and gas companies further — a second time in six months — he risks driving investment out of the UK altogether.”

The G20 has issued a formal decree promoting vaccine passports as preparation for any future pandemic response in its final communique. Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin, speaking on the matter on behalf of the G20 host country, had earlier in the summit called for a “digital health certificate” using WHO standards.

Sadikin advocated for that he dubbed a “digital health certificate” which shows whether a person has been “vaccinated or tested properly” so that only then “you can move around”. Watch his comments during a G20 Bali panel discussion earlier in the week…

G20 to adopt Vaccine Passports using WHO standards

“Let’s have a digital health certificate acknowledged by WHO… if you have been vaccinated or tested properly, then you can move around”, said the Indonesian health minister in Bali…

No thanks …

🔊sound …🤡🌎 pic.twitter.com/VDM1qK4xW5

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) November 16, 2022

A somewhat more vaguely-worded version of these recommendations was included in the official G20 leaders’ declaration, which calls for digital COVID-19 certificates, or often simply called vaccine passports.

The section of the final communique, which is republished and available on the White House website, which deals with vaccines and the Covid-19 pandemic begins, “We recognize that the extensive COVID-19 immunization is a global public good and we will advance our effort to ensure timely, equitable and universal access to safe, affordable, quality and effective vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics (VTDs).”

While describing the need for greater collaboration among nations during any future pandemic response, it continues in this section, “We remain committed to embedding a multisectoral One Health approach and enhancing global surveillance, including genomic surveillance, in order to detect pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) that may threaten human health.”

And then the following is introduced in Article 23: 

We acknowledge the importance of shared technical standards and verification methods, under the framework of the IHR (2005), to facilitate seamless international travel, interoperability, and recognizing digital solutions and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccinations.

We support continued international dialogue and collaboration on the establishment of trusted global digital health networks as part of the efforts to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemics, that should capitalize and build on the success of the existing standards and digital COVID-19 certificates.

Interestingly, the next paragraph of the formal declaration, article 24, goes on to describe the need to for global institutions to fight against ‘disinformation’. 

G20 – BREAKING: leaders have just signed a declaration which states that vaccine passports will be adopted to “facilitate” all international travel

This means any vaccination the WHO determines you should have.

Changing your rights & freedoms forever.

Silence from the media. pic.twitter.com/0pHISCcVaM

— Bernie’s Tweets (@BernieSpofforth) November 17, 2022

Article 24 of the final G20 declaration begins, “The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the transformation of the digital ecosystem and digital economy.”

And then leads into to the following statement later in the section: “We acknowledge the importance to counter disinformation campaigns, cyber threats, online abuse, and ensuring security in connectivity infrastructure.”

So as predicted by many early on in the pandemic (who were all dismissed and condemned as “conspiracy theorists”), a future proposed standardized vaccine passport will be accompanied by efforts for greater standardization and policing against ‘disinformation’ – likely to include any speech critical of the type of regimen that G20 leaders wish to enact. 

As for the type of speech which will be allowed under such a program, it’s helpful to recall the New Zealand prime minister’s words…

“Unless you hear it from us, it is not the truth. Dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.” -Jacinda Ardern

“if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale, then the lie became truth” -1984, Orwell pic.twitter.com/wHCnl52Rnv

— New World Odor™ (@hugh_mankind) July 22, 2022

Authored by Owen Evans via The Epoch Times,

Major supermarket chains Asda and Lidl have started to ration the number of boxes of eggs customers can buy owing to supply chain issues.

Both stores said the measure is temporary and because of avian flu which has disrupted the supply of some egg ranges.

Waitrose said it had not introduced any limits but was “continuing to monitor customer demand.”

Other major retailers including Tesco, Morrisons, Marks and Spencer and Co-op said they were not limiting sales. Sainsbury is stocking eggs imported from Italy.

Last week, the government said that the UK is facing its largest-ever outbreak of bird flu with over 200 cases confirmed across the country since late October 2021.

While acknowledging bird flu, poultry farmers say that energy costs and retailers buying produce at low prices are now tightening the supply of eggs.

‘Media Is Getting It Wrong’

Full-time fourth-generation farmer Ioan Humphreys told The Epoch Times that there is going to be an “egg shortage.”

Humphreys has a farm in Wales with 32,000 free-range hens. On Nov. 8 he posted a video to Twitter that had over 125,000 views in which he argued that “avian flu is not the main reason we’re in an egg shortage. Supermarkets doing as they please again.”

On Thursday, he posted another video in which he said that “the mainstream media can’t get their head around the fact that it’s the supermarkets’ fault for this egg shortage, not avian flu.”

Humphreys claims the supermarkets are not paying farmers for the eggs despite upping the price for the consumer. The price increase is not reaching farmers even though costs for producing feed, electricity, and new birds have gone up.

“They are taking things a bit overboard by rationing, it’ll create panic buying. The media is getting it wrong by saying it’s bird flu when it’s the supermarkets not buying for a fair price which is the issue,” he told The Epoch Times.

“There is going to be an egg shortage, there will be less, and farmers can’t afford to produce,” he said.

“There was bird flu last year and there wasn’t a shortage of eggs because we could afford to produce,” he added.

Last week, a spokesman for the British Free Range Egg Producers Association, told The Epoch Times that over a third of egg farmers are considering quitting the industry because they say it is no longer economically viable to farm hens.

The issue of rationing reached the House of Commons on Thursday.

Labour MP Dan Jarvis asked environment secretary Therese Coffey, “Avian influenza has meant that the British Free Range [Egg] Producers Association have said that a third of members have cut back on production, so, can the secretary of state say what the government is doing to help poultry farmers through what is a very challenging time?”

“The minister for food, farming, and fishing is meeting the industry on a regular basis, a weekly basis, is my understanding,” said Coffey.

“I think it’s fair to say retailers have not directly contacted the department to indicate supply chains, although I am conscious of what is happening in individual shelves,” she said.

“But recognising there are still about nearly 14 million egg-laying hens available, I’m confident we can get through this supply difficulty in the short term,” added Coffey.

Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, told The Epoch Times by email: “While avian flu has disrupted the supply of some egg ranges, retailers are experts at managing supply chains and are working hard to minimise impact on customers. Some stores have introduced temporary limits on the number of boxes customers can buy to ensure availability for everyone.”

“Supermarkets source the vast majority of their food from the UK and know they need to pay a sustainable price to egg farmers but are constrained by how much additional cost they can pass onto consumers during a cost-of-living crisis,” he added.

Ukraine’s largest city and capital of Kyiv, with about 3 million residents, saw half its home and businesses plunged into darkness following Tuesday’s largescale Russian airstrikes which once again targeted energy infrastructure nationwide. Much of the electricity was restored in the capital city Wednesday, while much of it remained off in many other parts of the country.

In a rare occurrence, most of the western city of Lviv had also been plunged into darkness this week, after what authorities called the biggest wave of Russian strikes on power facilities since the invasion began.

“Photos of Kyiv draped in darkness have become a shareable illustration of winter in Ukraine this year: dark, cold, dangerous,” observed The Hill. “Ukraine’s energy infrastructure is under attack from Russia, which has failed to defeat Ukrainian forces on the battlefield and is now once again targeting civilians.”

An estimated 100 missiles had rained down on Ukrainian cities over the span of just a couple hours on Tuesday, chiefly targeting the energy grid. 

President Zelensky had already earlier in November warned that 40% of the country’s energy system has been destroyed. 

One Kyiv resident, Vladimir Yanachuk, was cited in NPR as saying, “We are not afraid about this. Ukrainians are not afraid about this,” while acknowledging: “Winter will be hard. But this winter will be hard not only for Ukrainians, but for Russian soldiers too.”

Temperatures in the capital and other parts of Ukraine have dipped below freezing this week, with the first snow fall of the season dusting Kyiv. 

The AFP reports, “The first snow of the winter falls on Maidan Square in Kyiv, blanketing its statues and anti-tank obstacles as the Ukrainian capital faces blackouts and power outages from a fresh series of Russian strikes targeting the country’s energy infrastructure.”

Sirens and snow in Kyiv this morning pic.twitter.com/0VyHQOTrx2

— Rohit Kachroo (@RohitKachrooITV) November 17, 2022

Meanwhile The New York Times notes the continued emergency that the country’s vital nuclear power plants are facing, given they themselves must rely on the national grid for aspects of their normal operations. 

NetBlocks metrics on the day of Russia’s large-scale strikes this week…

⚠️ Confirmed: #Ukraine is currently experiencing a major internet disruption; live metrics show national connectivity at 67% of previous levels; the incident comes amid reports of one of the most intense Russian missile attacks to date 📉

📰 Background: https://t.co/S0qJQ7CbNv pic.twitter.com/XE4w2o1Uzp

— NetBlocks (@netblocks) November 15, 2022

“Ukraine relies on its three working nuclear power plants — Khmelnytskyi, Rivne and South Ukraine — to generate much of the power used in the country. It is now struggling to keep open these Ukrainian-controlled plants amid Russia’s assault on the energy grid,” The Times reports.

Via OilPrice.com,

• A study on government electricity and gas price data reveals that Brits pay the world’s highest energy bills.

• Norway is the country with by far the biggest increase in electricity prices worldwide

• The UK’s energy price cap was recently raised from 28p to 34p per kWh.

New research reveals that the UK has the highest electricity bills.

Brits pay more for their power than anywhere else on the planet.

A new study looked at Government data on electricity and gas prices from the past five years to analyse the impact of the worsening cost of living crisis and discover which countries have had the biggest year-on-year increase in energy prices. The data, compiled by BOXT, was shared with City A.M. today

The UK’s energy price cap was recently raised from 28p to 34p per kWh.

Much like the rest of the world, prices have increased due to reduced supply from Russia due to the Ukraine conflict, as well as the after-effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

The UK’s neighbours in the Republic of Ireland have the second highest electricity cost, paying 18.99p per kWh. That’s 53 per cent more expensive than the average of these 24 countries.

However, prices are slightly more affordable when it comes to gas in Ireland, which stands at 5.21p per kWh.

The countries with the highest electricity prices

Residents of Spain are paying an average of 18.51p per kWh. Electricity prices in Spain recently hit a historical high and were recently capped at €130 (£112) per megawatt hour, down from €210 (£181).

Norway is the country with by far the biggest increase in electricity prices worldwide – 91 per cent increase in electricity cost in pence/kWh since 2016.

Top 10 countries with the biggest electricity bill price increase:

The second highest electricity rises are in Finland – Since 2016, Finnish residents have seen their electricity bills increase by almost two-fifths (37%) on average.

Tied in third place are the Czech Republic, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, with a 35% increase in electricity prices.