UK, Germany, Italy, France, Japan — Likeliest for Economic Crash This Year

1 January 2025, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

The key economic variable distinguishing between nations is the average electricity prices for industrial users (manufacturers, regardless of size), because industrial users — the most crucial determinants of a nation’s future economic success — are huge users of energy, especially of electricity (regardless whether from oil, gas, coal, nuclear, solar, or otherwise). Low cost of electricity tends strongly toward a good economic future; high cost of electricity tends strongly toward a bad economic future. Furthermore, the prices of electricity vary enormously between nations — and this means enormously different likelihoods of future economic success or failure for the various nations.

On 5 November 2024, the Financial Times headlined “Taiwan’s soaring energy prices and growing outages hit chipmaker TSMC. Industry loses competitiveness as government struggles to afford cheap-power incentives”, and presented a chart showing “2023 average electricity prices for industrial users ($ per MWh)” listing, in order, from the costliest to the cheapest:

UK 420

Germany 266

Italy 250

France 238

Japan 170

Brazil 160

Turkey 138

Mexico 125

S. Korea 120

Thailand 117

India 105

Taiwan 102

Argentina 94

U.S. 85

Canada 74

Indonesia 67

Russia 63

China 60

The FT article opened:

Taiwan’s laboured energy transition is straining its industry, with sudden electricity price jumps and growing outage risks affecting companies including Asia’s biggest — the semiconductor giant TSMC.

Following a series of price increases, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company now expects to pay more for power in its home country than anywhere else. The world’s largest chipmaker operates plants in the US and Japan and is building one in Germany.

“Basically, the price has doubled in the past few years. So next year, we think that [the] electricity price for us in Taiwan will be the highest in all the regions that we operate,” Wendell Huang, chief financial officer, told investors last month. …

Subsidising those … has become untenable, as a surge in global fossil fuel prices since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and a lack of ample alternative power sources has saddled state-owned utility Taiwan Power Company with spiralling losses. Taipei has had to raise electricity prices four times since 2022.

On January 1st, Alexander Mercouris, who is perhaps unexcelled as an intelligence analyst, headlined “EU prepares to launch energy war [against its two members that are opposed to the EU’s war against Russia]” and said that all of the EU except for Hungary and Slovakia are committing economic suicide by intensifying yet further their war against Russia, especially their efforts to create a new iron curtain prohibiting any further imports of energy from Russia. Until recently, Russia had been overwhelmingly Europe’s lowest-cost and largest energy-producer, mainly via pipelined natural gas, which fueled mainly the EU’s companies that generate electricity. European (including the UK) manufacturers relied mainly upon Russia in order to avoid being globally uncompetitive (which they have now become). So, Europe’s new iron curtain is eliminating what had been the chief engine of these nations’ economies.

This means that UK, Germany, Italy, France, and Japan, are probably the world’s likeliest economies to go belly-up — have an economic crash — this year.

When considering a Government’s likelihood of defaulting on its debt, the most commonly cited determinant is the nation’s debt/GDP ratio. Here those are, from Trading Economics:

UK (97.6), Germany (62.9), Italy (135), France (111), Japan (255)

Mercouris explains that European nations’ soaring economic uncompetitiveness — the EU’s (including UK’s) obsession to cut off all energy from Russia — bodes economic disaster for Europe. The enormous variance in electrical costs indicated in that FT article would suggest that the 4 European economies which have the highest electrical costs will be under the most extreme stress this year. Japan, like the EU (and UK) does what the U.S. Government wants them to do; so, it too will be under increased stress. However, Russia was never Japan’s behemoth energy supplier; so, in that sense, Europe’s new iron curtain against Russia will produce a much bigger economic shock to Europe than to Japan. Therefore, the European countries are especially at risk now.

PS: If you like this article, please email it to all your friends or otherwise let others know about it. None of the U.S.-and-allied ‘news’-media will likely publish it (nor link to it, since doing that might also hurt them with Google or etc.). I am not asking for money, but I am asking my readers to spread my articles far and wide, because I specialize in documenting what the Deep State is constantly hiding — what the ‘news’-media ignore if they can, and deny if they must. This is, in fact, today’s samizdat.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.