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The Leopards Eating Faces and Unlubed Dildo of Consequences Thread


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Posted
18 hours ago, Orale said:

Why did so many of these small business guys not consider how bad chaos might be for their businesses? From these lower level guys all the way up to Jamie Dimon types saying we need to get over worrying about tariffs. As a small business guy myself, it's mind blowing to me how enormous a blind spot all these guys have. FAFO indeed and we all get to pay for it. 

Look no further than the mortgage and real estate thread on DT. Real estate professionals overwhelmingly voted for the administration because they wanted lower rates and better business conditions, which confused me then, but whatever.
I am now shocked to realize that many or most of them seem to be under a vague impression that the Fed controls mortgage rates.

Posted
On 7/30/2025 at 8:12 AM, Post Oak said:

Once again Texas shoots itself in the dick

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Congress’ new budget bill is an energy earthquake. It could wipe out tens of gigawatts of energy production, just as we’re experiencing load growth unlike anything since the 1960’s. It will drive power bills higher for families and factories, and give China the upper hand in the race for 21st century economic supremacy.

To understand in more detail the impacts of the federal budget bill, this week on the Energy Capital Podcast, I talked with Dan O’Brien, senior modeling analyst at Energy Innovation. His team modeled what this bill really means for Texas and the numbers should stop us in our tracks.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter, you know I’ve warned about this moment for months. Now, the data is here. It’s worse than we thought. We were on a path to energy abundance and we’re about to get energy scarcity including increased risk of blackouts and much higher electric bills.

From Ramp to Cliff: What This Bill Actually Does

Here’s what Congress passed:

* Ends clean energy tax credits abruptly. No glide path, no transition, just a cliff.

* Imposes impossible project timelines that most developers can’t meet.

I’ve written before about how this creates scarcity, not abundance (Energy Scarcity). We’re pulling the cheapest, fastest-growing resources off the table while demand is surging. That’s a recipe for higher prices and weaker reliability.

And make no mistake: this isn’t happening in a vacuum. It’s happening right when Texas has proven that solar and storage are great for reliability and affordability.

The Modeling: 77 GW Gone

Dan’s modeling tells the story:

* 77 gigawatts of lost clean energy in Texas, including over 50 gigawatts of solar and over 20 gigawatts of wind)

* Only 2 gigawatts of additional gas

* Household power bills up $400–$500 a year

* Industrial energy costs up 50%

* Tens of billions in lost rural tax revenue

Put that in perspective: ERCOT’s entire summer peak is about 85 gigawatts. This bill wipes out nearly that much future clean power before it’s even built.

These numbers aren’t isolated. Princeton’s REPEAT Project and Columbia’s Climate Knowledge Initiative show the same trend: abruptly ending credits doesn’t save money. It costs money—because you’re replacing cheap renewables with expensive alternatives, or worse, with nothing at all.

 

Demand Is Exploding, So Why Are We Pulling Back?

At the same time, Texas demand is skyrocketing. From 2021 to 2025, Texas has experience 6% year-over-year growth, the fastest since the 1960s. AI data centers, crypto, and industrial electrification are all plugging in at once.

And here’s the kicker: the resources meeting that demand surge aren’t gas or coal. They’re wind, solar, and batteries. They’re 92% of what’s been added since 2021. In the first half of 2025, wind and solar made up 40% of ERCOT’s generation mix. Batteries are breaking records almost monthly, keeping the grid balanced during extreme heat and sudden shifts.

ERCOT calculated summer energy emergency risk dropped from 16% to under 1% in one year, because of solar and storage. We have the data. We have the results. So why are we sabotaging it?

The Human Side: Jobs and Rural Texas

The energy sector is one of the largest drivers of job growth in Texas. These are real people—60,000 Texans working in wind, solar, and storage, including 6,000 veterans. It’s rural school districts balancing their budgets with wind and solar tax base and farmers and ranchers keeping their land in their families for another generation.

It’s welders, electricians, and manufacturers in counties that haven’t seen this level of investment in decades.

 

Global Stakes: China’s Electrostate Moment

Zoom out. While we’re cutting our legs out from under us, China is sprinting ahead. Last year, they added 400 GW of clean energy, several Texases worth of power. Last month, they put in 90 gigawatts of solar. The Financial Times calls them the first “electrostate.”

The U.S.? We added 60 GW in 2024. And now we’re debating LNG power plants that don’t exist. As I wrote in Energy Submission: this isn’t energy dominance. It’s energy surrender.

If we abandon clean energy leadership now, we’re not just risking higher bills—we’re giving away the 21st century.

There’s Still Time: Ramp, Don’t Cliff

I’m not arguing for permanent subsidies. We should phase them out, but smartly, with predictability. A ramp-down avoids price shocks, keeps manufacturing momentum, and protects rural tax bases while we scale what’s next.

We’ve already proven the formula: reliability up, prices down, emissions falling. It’s not theoretical. It’s working. And throwing it away overnight isn’t policy, it’s ideology.

The Bottom Line

The Texas grid is stronger than it’s ever been, because of solar and storage. That’s not my opinion; that’s ERCOT’s own data. Reliability is improving, costs are falling, and we’re finally catching up to the energy future the rest of the world is racing toward.

This bill reverses that progress. It’s a choice between abundance and scarcity, between leadership and surrender. And the clock is ticking.

Timestamps

* 00:00 – Introduction

* 02:00 – What is the federal budget bill and why is it important?

* 04:30 – Impact on Texas power

* 07:00 – Why is there only a tiny increase in new gas capacity

* 10:00 – Modeling Assumptions and Safe Harbor Provisions

* 12:30 – Demand forecasts and modeling variables

* 14:00 – Residential energy cost increases: $480/year

* 16:00 – Why that could be worse if Treasury’s guidance is restrictive

* 19:00 – Why are power prices high if renewables are lowering costs?

* 21:00 – 54% increase in power costs for large commercial & industrial customers

* 25:00 – Job losses from the federal bill

* 29:00 – Rural community impacts and manufacturing losses

* 30:00 – Policymakers could revisit this policy as the impacts take hold

* 32:00 – Phasing out credits would protect consumers and end them permanently

 

* 77 gigawatts of lost clean energy in Texas, including over 50 gigawatts of solar and over 20 gigawatts of wind)

* Only 2 gigawatts of additional gas

* Household power bills up $400–$500 a year

* Industrial energy costs up 50%

* Tens of billions in lost rural tax

 

 

For comparison, those 60,000 clean energy jobs currently in Texas are significantly more valuable, environmentally friendly and safer than the entirety of the 42,000 coal miner jobs that exist in the entire US. Coal is a very small industry compared to the rest of the energy market, but it has an outsized voice in politics for other reasons. It should be a national goal to get rid of entirely as an energy source, as it naturally gets replaced with green energy technologies that are constantly making gains in efficiency and cost. The next Dem president should ban exports of coal and essentially cut the balls off the industry to all but remove it from the field. Even other fossil fuels are preferable to coal for energy generation. 

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Posted
20 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

Yup.  And it is not unreasonable to predict that other countries will stop investing in United States bonds and equities and/or the US dollar once they realize Trump sits on his shitter at night and decides what all the job and inflation numbers will be.   The combination of constantly threatening J Pow - and now essentially trying to create a path to falsify economic data that the Fed will utilize to govern US financial policy, I’m pretty sure the money people in other countries who of necessity must have accurate empirical data in order to form their own competent financial policy will go…

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Eventually, investing in the United States with Trump as president (with a bunch of people acting as guard rails, preventing him from doing his stupid, worst instincts)  will now be analyzed as investing in an unstable country with an unstable president who pulls tariff numbers out of his ass, has no idea how trade networks work, and more importantly who has no guard rails from continuing his five-year-old petulant child, who is dumber than shit demanding that everything goes his way.

I had dinner with my ex longtime law partner Friday - and after I finished bitching about everybody seeming to bend the knee to that dip shit - she reminded me that as POTUS he is the most powerful individual in the world, coupled with a childish, vindictive personality and a substandard intelligence.    She said we were living in the twilight zone episode, “ it’s a good life”.   Billy Mummy played a six-year-old kid with psychic powers who had either destroyed the world, or moved his small town someplace else in the universe.   He had unlimited powers and could read minds, and everybody had to 100% toady to the six year-old - or he would cause them unimaginable harm.  Why? Because he was incredibly powerful.  Worse, he was immature, cruel, had zero empathy for other people, insisted on always being right, and would punish or destroy anyone who did not disagree with his every whim or opinion. 

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Fuck!!  She is right.  A perfect analogy. 

 

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Posted
31 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

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Worth pointing out that apparel is a classic case of manufacturing and import/export.  There's raw material (cotton wool silk synthetics), intermediate goods (thread fabric), and finished goods (the actual clothing), and an import/export/tariff scenario at every step.

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Posted
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Look no further than the mortgage and real estate thread on DT. Real estate professionals overwhelmingly voted for the administration because they wanted lower rates and better business conditions, which confused me then, but whatever.
I am now shocked to realize that many or most of them seem to be under a vague impression that the Fed controls mortgage rates.

It's funny because if Harris would have won, we probably would have seen the market continue the same trajectory it had with Biden and the Fed would have cut rates 2 or three times by now.

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Posted
4 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Worth pointing out that apparel is a classic case of manufacturing and import/export.  There's raw material (cotton wool silk synthetics), intermediate goods (thread fabric), and finished goods (the actual clothing), and an import/export/tariff scenario at every step.

Yeah, but they don't use Gobelin machinery in the apparel biz. Sukenon is the industry leader.

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Posted (edited)
2 minutes ago, The Hot Dog Buffet said:

It's funny because if Harris would have won, we probably would have seen the market continue the same trajectory it had with Biden and the Fed would have cut rates 2 or three times by now.

that's the part that enrages me the most. this regime could have just coasted on the policies from their predecessors and claimed all the good coming from it as their own, and I would have been fine with it because I wouldn't be lying awake at night wondering if I can keep my business or not. 

Edited by Longhorn_Fan68
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Posted

Story about high-end cookware maker in TN that remains optimistic despite being gouged pretty hard by tariffs.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/economy/cookware-maker-bracing-steel-tariffs-wall-pots-pans-rcna218250

Declines to disclose political affiliations.

He's a Chicago grad that did some work in the Chicago mayor's office.

He may have a handle on how tariffs will affect his costing versus his competitors.  But he may not have a handle on how tariffs and inflation are going to affect demand for his pricey and highly discretionary products.

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Posted

On MTG:

17 hours ago, Gatorubet said:

As Trump has not selected her for any position in his cabinet or agencies or embassies, despite him hiring a bus load of idiots and incompetents, she probably realizes she’s not attractive enough to be a female appointee in his administration. 

But she is still a skilled grifter, with a complete absence of morality, so her going after potential Elmo money seems like a rational and potentially very profitable strategy.

Trump fears her brain.

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You're almost there, Austin. So close. Think before you answer.

If government harms small business to bankruptcy but not big business, who might government be serving?

Here's the graduate level question Austin. No, take off the red cap. You can do it. Gooood. Now the question: Who would take over the market share left when small businesses vanish?

No, not the Mexicans. Think. Small Business and Big Business are the only two owners of a pie. Yes. A strawberry rhubarb pie if you like. Yum yuum. Okay, only two people own the pie, but one of them dies. How many people own the pie?

Do you want one person, big business, to own all the pie?

Forget about the scary brown people. And the socialists...

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