Of course she was and good for her, actually. The ironic part about this is that when the House starts up next week, this will be one of the big items along with Keystone. The timing of this was intentional because they would rather be answering questions about this than the screwed up vaccine roll out. I have a bunch of US friends I communicate with regularly and it is amazing how many of them are getting the shot from all kinds of sources, surplus, friends, connections, etc, etc. I have told them my plan is to continue to hide out until we achieve herd immunity. I am not counting on a shot. If things get really bad on the vaccine questions, someone said last night they will release the GG report to keep the focus on that.
Notwithstanding Michelle Jean, and David Johnson – let’s actually leverage the pomp to fix the/a problem.
Make Prince Harry the GG.
Let’s not be cynics here, it gets a couple of birds stoned:
– it will provide meaning to a vacant post in jeopardy of being made redundant.
– it will put Her Majesty’s heart at peace to have her grandson back on good terms.
– it will make us Canadians feel like we have a celebrity and provide morale —- morale, the true product of a monarchy.
– it is Prince Harry’s destiny, that boy from the stables deserves his true opportunity to define his legacy. It will be the true test of where he stands, family/work or wife leading him around by the nose.
– (your benefits go here)
– we are part of the commonwealth, it forces the issue, now is the time if Trudeau wants any kind of legacy other than. Legalizing ganja (thanks for that btw)
Can someone at Daisy float this into the PMO, please?
It’s 2021, we need to focus on the pain points and fix all this shit if we are going to get it right.
So, you want our First Lady to be the 21st century version of Wallis Simpson? I can just see her gushing about how much she loves Canada while spending nine months of every year in California. But she’s probably get along great with Sophie.
Find a bland, dutiful minor royal who is prepared to spend half the day attending minor hockey games in small towns and the other half emoting with non-white Canadians recounting their struggles against racism and we’ll embrace him/her as the perfect reflection of all that is Canadian.
The vice-regal duties of the GG are even more mundane and mind-numbing than the royal duties the Prince Harry and his Duchess had in the UK.
The Duchess is interested in celebrity, and hanging out with her celebrity friends, and being a celebrity virtue-signalling do gooder, than in unglamourous duty.
The more I ponder this, the more furious I become.
This Prime Minister – undoubtedly the most unpatriotic in our history – made a blatantly political appointment to a profoundly UNPOLITICAL role that sits at the very heart of our democracy. If this is how the GG role is to be treated, then I support abolishing it.
When is this stuff going to matter to women voters in Ontario and Atlantic Canada? Does his hair really surpass all of that?
Voters- female or otherwise– put up with the Liberals because the Conservatives rarely have an answer to problems besides a tax cut. People know the Kind are corrupt but don’t trust the Conservatives to actually help solve tough problems.
Derek have you noticed wealth inequality explode under the Liberals the past 6 years? Did you know that the cost of an average Canadian home is now 50% higher (exchange rate adjusted) than the cost of an average American home? Did you know that the Liberals’ money printing mostly helps the wealthy with a few scraps to the lazy?
Everything about Canada has gotten shittier since 2015 for those who work hard and aren’t born to wealth. Pierre Poilievre calls it a “war on work” and he’s not far off. The Liberals have devised an economy where people are forced to speculate on real estate to make any real money.
None of this seems to matter to the “great hair!” voters.
Maestro Greenspan built the asset inflation era with his ‘Greenspan Put’ and deregulation of the Great Depression era Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Ronald Reagan’s ‘trickledown’ so-called ‘Economics’ fostered the asset inflation era by building a system of finance that funneled wealth to the top 0.01% based upon the false assumption that ‘trickledown’ floats all boats when it merely only floats the Cape sized behemoth boats of the wealth extracting predator parasite crony capitalists like Buffett & Bezos.
Look up hopeless imbeciles as regards the concept of continuous financial and banking sector deregulation in the States and you will find one word: Republicans.
Can’t disagree with you there Robert. Greenspan was a uniquely horrible character.
But isn’t it interesting that these days it seems to be the Liberals who are most enthusiastic about maintaining this asset inflation regime that mostly benefits the wealthy and is financially ruining Canadians under 40? The Conservatives have among their ranks many members and supporters who are now skeptics of central bank ZIRP and QE policies. Not necessarily the majority of them, but it is a large and growing faction. Pierre Poilievre is literally the only MP out of 338 that raises these issues. The Liberals? Not so much. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Liberal or so-called progressive who doesn’t sing the praises of globalist central bankers. Just reinforces my view that the Liberals serve the rich and the welfare poor. The Conservatives are the party of the working man.
You know what Pedant? Everything you’ve said is true– AND all of it would still be true but even worse under Conservatives, so answer my original comment directly. BESIDES tax cuts and the ever-popular BS of “cutting red tape”, what will the Conservatives do to address the problems of working families (or underemployed families). What? No tax cuts or red tape allowed as part of your answer cuz it’s electoraly a failure. Now go, answer:
By that logic things must have been much worse for working families under Harper. Were they? Can you give examples?
You seem to think you’re clairvoyant and know in advance what the Conservatives would do if in power. I don’t have a crystal ball. But we can look to the Harper government for some guidance :
– lower immigration, meaning less wage suppression on the working and middle classes
– tax free savings account, allowing every family to legally shelter some of their savings and investments, essentially democratizing but previously only the rich were able to do
– no quantitative easing (or very little); Pierre Poilievre, a Conservative, is the only MP speaking out against this; QE and zero interest rate policy help the wealthy first and foremost
– real support for job-making industries like oil and gasa; Trudeau has shown that he only supports corrupt Quebec companies and not much else
It’s true that the Conservatives will be less inclined to steal money from productive workers to give to unproductive non-workers. Is that what you’re aiming for?
It was the Conservatives who initially loosened CMHC rules that helped push up housing prices and thier support of the free market makes them less likely to reign it in.
Actually no, the big cities delivered the victory, possibly more from fear than reality. A good sell job. The Liberals did not win the popular vote.
It is pretty sad we forget that Liberals biggest point-getter in the past 70 years is an NDP idea called universal health care.
Wage and price control to manage the 1970s inflation? that was a PC idea that this clown’s father mocked than stole.
With all respect to Warren’s love of the man, Chretien won promising to “SCRAP” the GST than saw the wisdom of a conservative tax reform and how well it could work. He and Paul Martin with pressure from Reform took a lot of good ideas and made them liberal. If not for that their spending also would have been through the roof.
Canadian unity, so badly screwed up that we have an opposition party committed to our downfall.
To their credit the idea thieves did steal some good ones along the way.
One might even note Trudeau did his own tax cut at the expense of wealthier Canadians.
SO please, tell me what original idea the libs have for anything?
Oh yes the hidden agenda that was a great idea!
Only question I have is…Does Warren speak French fluently?
Good King Harry does not like the public eye of late so he’s not a good fit, Quimby. And his life partner is too invested in herself to be focused on the position IMHO.
Kinsella is the best bet for Governor General if he speaks French fluently.
It’s true, we all experience things differently. That’s because every human being has their very own brain and central nervous system. It takes a distinguished scientist and astronaut to figure that out.
Harry is a no-go for me despite his numerous qualities. He’s British, not Canadian.
The only thing more ridiculous was the British parody performed by Massey, our so-called first Canadian GG. He went out of his way to out-British the British. What a contemptible spectacle that was.
So which celebrity is odds on favorite as Payette’s replacement? Maybe a former cast members from one of the Degrassi series (Drake probably won’t be interested for a few more decades)? Maybe the guy who hosted the science show on CBC? He would have impeccable “believes in science” credentials
I want a GG who is only well known in their area of expertise and who has made a tremendous contribution in their field that has benefitted Canadians. I also want a person who genuinely speaks to all races, religions and creeds and most importantly, has a natural ability to listen far more than she or he speaks and who is a living embodiment of empathy and compassion. In short, one hell of a short list. No politicians nor backroom toadies, please.
Pedant, Finance Capitalism throughout the world is controlled by the USA Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. That board of governors is made up of Democrat & Republican Math PhDs, but it was recently captured by
ex-POTUS currently awaiting trial on charges of sedition & insurrection.
In brief, the Orange Menace forced Jerome Powell’s central bank interest rate reduction so that he could goose markets ahead of his lost gambit for the White House as incumbent candidate for 2020.
Bottom line is that the Orange Menace bad person took the USA closer to ZIRP leaving the conundrum of asset inflation and wealth inequality is worse shape than it was before he decided to run for office on a whim of narcissism run amok.
Both Liberal/Democrats & Republican/Conservative camps are culpable for the last half century of asset inflation across North America and beyond.
The Oligopoly thought erroneously that the wizards of the accounts in Finance Capitalism managed to curtail risk with their collective financial alchemy, but they actually made risk worse by being that naive.
The real reason asset inflation is here to stay until the whole system blows fat tails on the distribution is because of the Dark Pool Derivatives Universe which is an estimated $1.8 quadrillion U$D and counting.
Poilievre is Shadow Finance Minister and as such he hears from me on these issues. I recently wrote to him outlining all the conundrums because like you I trust his stance when it comes to finance.
The Conservatives are still Rand acolytes to this day, but Rand’s thesis has been repudiated system wide due to the fact that the wealth extractors offshored their combined wealth in order to avoid paying municipal, provincial/state, and federal taxation which resulted in debt-to-GDP of sovereign nations that cannot be sustained.
P.S. You are one smart cookie, Pedant, but you ask really BIG questions that deserve better answers than a paragraph or two from moi IMHO.
The global systemic problem most related to this QE fallacy is not an inability to crack down on offshore tax havens but a quite deliberate lack of desire of sovereign governments to effectively do so. In other words, scratch your average upper level politician and their natural political stakeholders, the upper class and you find the main reason for this lack of action. OTHs are where the money is, even now in 2021.
I absolutely agree with all your points but would go further: enemy number one, is of course, The Fed itself and its cousin incarnations across the globe. It’s all about absolute financial system control and most importantly, logically extending it, in their view, to individual and corporate assets by instituting across the board digital currency that can theoretically be monitored 24/7 by central banks via their all too willing clients, investment, money-centre and chartered banks. It’s the ultimate Big Brother on steroids with the consequence of moving the planet down the road to an eventual unitary form of government based on the financial and economic dictates of the central bank cabal.
They already know that what will be left in economies will be private, large monopolies in nature which also will gladly do the bidding of those at the top, the ultimate beneficiaries of this global wealth transfer that began in 2008 subsequent to the start of QE and is now ongoing until central banks finally achieve their objective of total monetary economic control.
Sure, Trump made Powell reverse course on hiking interest rates solely for political considerations but his subsequent behaviour, like those of all other major economy leaders only proves that this is a quite deliberate concerted effort from the same playbook. The Fed, The B of C, The ECB, The B of E and The B of J are more or less all on the same trajectory and we all know who are the only economic beneficiaries of such policies as QE, keeping interest rates artificially low, etc. and it clearly is not the middle or lower classes.
And worse than that is that elected leaders are the captives of their central banks. See Biden nominating Yellen for Treasury. That says it all about how Obama, Trump and now Biden are more than willing tools of central bank policy. And guess where other Treasury secretaries came from in recent decades…?
Remember that The Fed sets the course, developed and outlined only by the best interests of its stakeholders and SOLE shareholders, namely, the investment and money-centre banks in the United States, UK, Germany, Japan and China who are the only shareholders that control The Fed, a private institution, NOT a government agency, in spite of the fact that the Chair and board nominees are federal appointees. In short, that’s called your classic case of window dressing to hoodwink, or put to sleep, the masses.
American banks were insolvent in 2008 and are once again in that same predicament but it’s okay because The Fed is once again doing their bidding by bailing them out with endless trillions of newly created tax dollars. Joe and Jane taxpayer are stuck with the bill while legislators fight over how many crumbs go to those who are either on the verge or have already lost their jobs, homes, cars, etc. Look to the homeless colonies across the globe and you have your answer as to whom central banks and their natural allies, governments, truly are there to serve: not the poor saps who pay the taxes, assuming they still have jobs to pay future taxes.
Meanwhile, derivatives and margin will never be outlawed in the United States, or elsewhere, and no bank representatives will ever go to jail for their conduct either in 2008 or today. And you know who will continue to laugh at fines in the low billions for having manipulated silver and other precious metal prices through phoney derivative contracts for inexistent actual physical silver, while the band plays on. And why do they laugh do you ask? Because, they don’t mind being fined 1-2 billion by regulators having made between 10 and 25 billion on those trades. So, finally, voilà: a true expression of crony capitalism at its finest that lives and breathes today, as always, and who’s representatives and political stooges laugh all the way to the bank. In the words of central banks: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just let us control economies and personal finance while the top 2-3% globally keep a beaming. In America, the train initially went off the rails with Reagan, then was struck a glancing blow by Clinton and it’s been all downhill from there in the wake of Bush II, Obama and Trump. And sadly, no, the long bought and paid for American politicians will never fix it.
Great synopsis, Ronald. You are almost as pissed off as I am regarding central banking, but I was raised by a Chartered Accountant so I’ve been mad at the bankers for pretty much my entire life because they don’t think like accountants do.
Economists don’t think like accountants do either, and that’s why I never became an Economist. And following my dad into accounting was never an option because accountants are dull people with not much in the way of creativity to speak of.
Marxism is the only way forward where political revolution will suffice to take down the bankers and cronies. And the way forward post-GFC is broaching my absolute favorite subject matter which is Quantum Mechanics and our only hope of the Second Law of Thermodynamics-Entropy.
Entropy is like Billybob’s boat in Live & Let Die. It’s the fastest boat on the river that will outpace the central bankers and their math Ph.Ds in the board of governors NYC.
BlackRock Inc. is acting the part of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but they can’t keep pace with the volume or flow.
Many on Zero Hedge are predicting yet another crash over the next six months. Entropy will crash the whole system worldwide.
The Venezuelan stock market charts speak volumes. In recent times they are on their way to another spectacular hockey-stick style leg up, just like before the previous crashes. At one point, their stock market went straight up for only eight years in a row and then boom.
With the transition in North America from deflation to inflation, our stock markets are starting to predictably shoot for the moon, practically on a daily basis. The hockey-stick pattern is basing now for the Americans. We all know the 70-90% crash is coming but what we don’t know is when. So, I gave up predicting the date and have settled on this: the stock markets will keep going up parabolically until they don’t and then it’s individual financial murder and wipeout. Yes, QE is the major cause but the other is retail investor greed and incredible stupidity, just like the period before every other crash in recent history. Institutional investors are long gone, or in precious metals or precious metal stocks — they’re the ones with brains. Therapeutically speaking, retail investors should be boning up on “Don’t cry for me, Argentina”.
The crash does not have to be predicted because it’s already here. Airlines, Retail Mom & Pop, REITs, Commercial RE, Mall REITs, Sports, Hospitality & Hotels are all sliding into bankruptcy en masse right now, but MSM is not reporting it at the same frequency as they are going under because the bureaucrats don’t want to frighten the public.
Recovery is impossible for the Restaurant industry and Airlines too. Just ask yourself if you would bail out the Airline industry and you have your answer vis-a-vis the decoupling creating the crash. Mandelbrot warned us all about speculative investments way back in 1963. He warned us all again just before he died post-Lehman debacle.
It’s not going to be a K-shaped recovery. That’s just what they want everyone to keep hanging on to for hope. Hope is not a strategy as you well know.
We are likeminded on the groupthink going on though.
My supposition has always been that we’re in an eventual L-shaped recovery but I expect the back end of the L to be at least three to four times longer than the front end. Won’t bet the farm on it, though.
I agree that parties of all stripes are to blame for the extreme levels of indebtedness and market distortions that we have today. It’s also true, as you allude, that the Fed and other central banks forced the BoC’s hand and it has little choice but to follow the ZIRP trend. Ultimately though, global bond markets decide where interest rates go. The BoC can temporarily suppress rates through bond buying, and is on track to own 50% of the Canadian bond market within the next year since nobody else is willing to buy our crappy notes at low rates. If this continues it will kill the loonie, and the resulting decline in purchasing power and standard of living for those who rely on wages rather than assets will lead to social unrest if the government doesn’t step in to refill their wallets with UBI….which means more government debt and even more pressure on the CAD, and yet more UBI required. A vicious circle. Until it blows up (and yes, the derivatives bubble could well be the eventual trigger).
I haven’t read Rand, but my understanding is that she was a free-market libertarian who wanted the government (and central bank) to stay out of the economy. Anyone who is truly a Rand acolyte should therefore want the central banks to stop interfering in the bond markets and allow interest rates to float upward to whatever level is dictated by market forces, regardless of any resulting impact on real estate and financial markets. Many people (not necessarily you) confuse crony capitalism with true capitalism.
The reason I fault the Liberals moreso than Conservatives (although both are to blame) is that the housing market in particular went parabolic when the Liberals came to power. Prior to 2016 it was only Vancouver that was in bubble territory. Now, with townhomes in Oshawa selling for $1 million, the entire country has turned into Vancouver. Partly this followed global trends (look at Australia), but the Liberals poured gasoline on the fire by spiking immigration by 40% without expanding housing and infrastructure to accommodate the newcomers. For the life of me I don’t know why Conservatives won’t bring this up. Canadians should be smart enough to understand that criticizing a particular immigration policy is not the same as criticizing immigrants as individuals.
Anyway this is getting off topic, but always happy to go off on a macroeconomic tangent.
North America was heavily reliant on China’s QE and the speculation that mainland China entrepreneurs were bringing to Vancouver Real Estate all while Harper was in office. Harper’s government incentivized the inflow by not regulating ownership so that Chinese billionaires and Chinese criminals could launder their wealth. The Chinese Government tried making it difficult for those individuals to take money out of the country, but they did it anyways by working through numbered accounts and LLCs to where nobody could track & trace the money being laundered.
I raised Hell with the Government of Canada Finance Department prior to the government shutting down the speculation and speculators. Thankfully, the government listened to me and the RCMP assigned forensic investigators to dig into the money laundering. Harper did not initiate it.
Perhaps Ms Payette was taking a shot at the Kokanee Groper?
Wonder if Justin will appoint Gerry Butts as GG?
Or perhaps Rosie Barton?
Of course she was and good for her, actually. The ironic part about this is that when the House starts up next week, this will be one of the big items along with Keystone. The timing of this was intentional because they would rather be answering questions about this than the screwed up vaccine roll out. I have a bunch of US friends I communicate with regularly and it is amazing how many of them are getting the shot from all kinds of sources, surplus, friends, connections, etc, etc. I have told them my plan is to continue to hide out until we achieve herd immunity. I am not counting on a shot. If things get really bad on the vaccine questions, someone said last night they will release the GG report to keep the focus on that.
Notwithstanding Michelle Jean, and David Johnson – let’s actually leverage the pomp to fix the/a problem.
Make Prince Harry the GG.
Let’s not be cynics here, it gets a couple of birds stoned:
– it will provide meaning to a vacant post in jeopardy of being made redundant.
– it will put Her Majesty’s heart at peace to have her grandson back on good terms.
– it will make us Canadians feel like we have a celebrity and provide morale —- morale, the true product of a monarchy.
– it is Prince Harry’s destiny, that boy from the stables deserves his true opportunity to define his legacy. It will be the true test of where he stands, family/work or wife leading him around by the nose.
– (your benefits go here)
– we are part of the commonwealth, it forces the issue, now is the time if Trudeau wants any kind of legacy other than. Legalizing ganja (thanks for that btw)
Can someone at Daisy float this into the PMO, please?
It’s 2021, we need to focus on the pain points and fix all this shit if we are going to get it right.
Do i have to do all the thinking around here?
–
How about one of the Keilbergers, eh ?
RKJ,
Priceless. Well done!
So, you want our First Lady to be the 21st century version of Wallis Simpson? I can just see her gushing about how much she loves Canada while spending nine months of every year in California. But she’s probably get along great with Sophie.
Find a bland, dutiful minor royal who is prepared to spend half the day attending minor hockey games in small towns and the other half emoting with non-white Canadians recounting their struggles against racism and we’ll embrace him/her as the perfect reflection of all that is Canadian.
The vice-regal duties of the GG are even more mundane and mind-numbing than the royal duties the Prince Harry and his Duchess had in the UK.
The Duchess is interested in celebrity, and hanging out with her celebrity friends, and being a celebrity virtue-signalling do gooder, than in unglamourous duty.
There is nothing wrong with that.
I mean seriously — what is more a Canadian thing to do than fix the Royal Family?
I can’t believe they would write that in 2021. Seriously tone deaf. WTF.. Well past time for the Justin cult to move on.
The more I ponder this, the more furious I become.
This Prime Minister – undoubtedly the most unpatriotic in our history – made a blatantly political appointment to a profoundly UNPOLITICAL role that sits at the very heart of our democracy. If this is how the GG role is to be treated, then I support abolishing it.
When is this stuff going to matter to women voters in Ontario and Atlantic Canada? Does his hair really surpass all of that?
Voters- female or otherwise– put up with the Liberals because the Conservatives rarely have an answer to problems besides a tax cut. People know the Kind are corrupt but don’t trust the Conservatives to actually help solve tough problems.
Derek have you noticed wealth inequality explode under the Liberals the past 6 years? Did you know that the cost of an average Canadian home is now 50% higher (exchange rate adjusted) than the cost of an average American home? Did you know that the Liberals’ money printing mostly helps the wealthy with a few scraps to the lazy?
Everything about Canada has gotten shittier since 2015 for those who work hard and aren’t born to wealth. Pierre Poilievre calls it a “war on work” and he’s not far off. The Liberals have devised an economy where people are forced to speculate on real estate to make any real money.
None of this seems to matter to the “great hair!” voters.
Maestro Greenspan built the asset inflation era with his ‘Greenspan Put’ and deregulation of the Great Depression era Glass-Steagall Act in 1999. Ronald Reagan’s ‘trickledown’ so-called ‘Economics’ fostered the asset inflation era by building a system of finance that funneled wealth to the top 0.01% based upon the false assumption that ‘trickledown’ floats all boats when it merely only floats the Cape sized behemoth boats of the wealth extracting predator parasite crony capitalists like Buffett & Bezos.
RW
Robert,
Look up hopeless imbeciles as regards the concept of continuous financial and banking sector deregulation in the States and you will find one word: Republicans.
Can’t disagree with you there Robert. Greenspan was a uniquely horrible character.
But isn’t it interesting that these days it seems to be the Liberals who are most enthusiastic about maintaining this asset inflation regime that mostly benefits the wealthy and is financially ruining Canadians under 40? The Conservatives have among their ranks many members and supporters who are now skeptics of central bank ZIRP and QE policies. Not necessarily the majority of them, but it is a large and growing faction. Pierre Poilievre is literally the only MP out of 338 that raises these issues. The Liberals? Not so much. I don’t think I’ve ever met a Liberal or so-called progressive who doesn’t sing the praises of globalist central bankers. Just reinforces my view that the Liberals serve the rich and the welfare poor. The Conservatives are the party of the working man.
You know what Pedant? Everything you’ve said is true– AND all of it would still be true but even worse under Conservatives, so answer my original comment directly. BESIDES tax cuts and the ever-popular BS of “cutting red tape”, what will the Conservatives do to address the problems of working families (or underemployed families). What? No tax cuts or red tape allowed as part of your answer cuz it’s electoraly a failure. Now go, answer:
By that logic things must have been much worse for working families under Harper. Were they? Can you give examples?
You seem to think you’re clairvoyant and know in advance what the Conservatives would do if in power. I don’t have a crystal ball. But we can look to the Harper government for some guidance :
– lower immigration, meaning less wage suppression on the working and middle classes
– tax free savings account, allowing every family to legally shelter some of their savings and investments, essentially democratizing but previously only the rich were able to do
– no quantitative easing (or very little); Pierre Poilievre, a Conservative, is the only MP speaking out against this; QE and zero interest rate policy help the wealthy first and foremost
– real support for job-making industries like oil and gasa; Trudeau has shown that he only supports corrupt Quebec companies and not much else
It’s true that the Conservatives will be less inclined to steal money from productive workers to give to unproductive non-workers. Is that what you’re aiming for?
It was the Conservatives who initially loosened CMHC rules that helped push up housing prices and thier support of the free market makes them less likely to reign it in.
Actually no, the big cities delivered the victory, possibly more from fear than reality. A good sell job. The Liberals did not win the popular vote.
It is pretty sad we forget that Liberals biggest point-getter in the past 70 years is an NDP idea called universal health care.
Wage and price control to manage the 1970s inflation? that was a PC idea that this clown’s father mocked than stole.
With all respect to Warren’s love of the man, Chretien won promising to “SCRAP” the GST than saw the wisdom of a conservative tax reform and how well it could work. He and Paul Martin with pressure from Reform took a lot of good ideas and made them liberal. If not for that their spending also would have been through the roof.
Canadian unity, so badly screwed up that we have an opposition party committed to our downfall.
To their credit the idea thieves did steal some good ones along the way.
One might even note Trudeau did his own tax cut at the expense of wealthier Canadians.
SO please, tell me what original idea the libs have for anything?
Oh yes the hidden agenda that was a great idea!
Warren Kinsella for Governor General!!!!
Only question I have is…Does Warren speak French fluently?
Good King Harry does not like the public eye of late so he’s not a good fit, Quimby. And his life partner is too invested in herself to be focused on the position IMHO.
Kinsella is the best bet for Governor General if he speaks French fluently.
RW
It’s true, we all experience things differently. That’s because every human being has their very own brain and central nervous system. It takes a distinguished scientist and astronaut to figure that out.
Harry is a no-go for me despite his numerous qualities. He’s British, not Canadian.
The only thing more ridiculous was the British parody performed by Massey, our so-called first Canadian GG. He went out of his way to out-British the British. What a contemptible spectacle that was.
Just off the top of my head, here are a few Canadians who I think would make a wonderful Governor-General:
– Celine Dion
– Vice-Admiral Mark Norman
– Arlene Dickinson
– Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson
– Shay Shariatzadeh
– Rick Hillier
– Wayne Gretzky.
So which celebrity is odds on favorite as Payette’s replacement? Maybe a former cast members from one of the Degrassi series (Drake probably won’t be interested for a few more decades)? Maybe the guy who hosted the science show on CBC? He would have impeccable “believes in science” credentials
I want a GG who is only well known in their area of expertise and who has made a tremendous contribution in their field that has benefitted Canadians. I also want a person who genuinely speaks to all races, religions and creeds and most importantly, has a natural ability to listen far more than she or he speaks and who is a living embodiment of empathy and compassion. In short, one hell of a short list. No politicians nor backroom toadies, please.
Pedant, Finance Capitalism throughout the world is controlled by the USA Federal Reserve Bank in New York City. That board of governors is made up of Democrat & Republican Math PhDs, but it was recently captured by
ex-POTUS currently awaiting trial on charges of sedition & insurrection.
In brief, the Orange Menace forced Jerome Powell’s central bank interest rate reduction so that he could goose markets ahead of his lost gambit for the White House as incumbent candidate for 2020.
Bottom line is that the Orange Menace bad person took the USA closer to ZIRP leaving the conundrum of asset inflation and wealth inequality is worse shape than it was before he decided to run for office on a whim of narcissism run amok.
Both Liberal/Democrats & Republican/Conservative camps are culpable for the last half century of asset inflation across North America and beyond.
The Oligopoly thought erroneously that the wizards of the accounts in Finance Capitalism managed to curtail risk with their collective financial alchemy, but they actually made risk worse by being that naive.
The real reason asset inflation is here to stay until the whole system blows fat tails on the distribution is because of the Dark Pool Derivatives Universe which is an estimated $1.8 quadrillion U$D and counting.
Poilievre is Shadow Finance Minister and as such he hears from me on these issues. I recently wrote to him outlining all the conundrums because like you I trust his stance when it comes to finance.
The Conservatives are still Rand acolytes to this day, but Rand’s thesis has been repudiated system wide due to the fact that the wealth extractors offshored their combined wealth in order to avoid paying municipal, provincial/state, and federal taxation which resulted in debt-to-GDP of sovereign nations that cannot be sustained.
P.S. You are one smart cookie, Pedant, but you ask really BIG questions that deserve better answers than a paragraph or two from moi IMHO.
RW
Robert,
The global systemic problem most related to this QE fallacy is not an inability to crack down on offshore tax havens but a quite deliberate lack of desire of sovereign governments to effectively do so. In other words, scratch your average upper level politician and their natural political stakeholders, the upper class and you find the main reason for this lack of action. OTHs are where the money is, even now in 2021.
I absolutely agree with all your points but would go further: enemy number one, is of course, The Fed itself and its cousin incarnations across the globe. It’s all about absolute financial system control and most importantly, logically extending it, in their view, to individual and corporate assets by instituting across the board digital currency that can theoretically be monitored 24/7 by central banks via their all too willing clients, investment, money-centre and chartered banks. It’s the ultimate Big Brother on steroids with the consequence of moving the planet down the road to an eventual unitary form of government based on the financial and economic dictates of the central bank cabal.
They already know that what will be left in economies will be private, large monopolies in nature which also will gladly do the bidding of those at the top, the ultimate beneficiaries of this global wealth transfer that began in 2008 subsequent to the start of QE and is now ongoing until central banks finally achieve their objective of total monetary economic control.
Sure, Trump made Powell reverse course on hiking interest rates solely for political considerations but his subsequent behaviour, like those of all other major economy leaders only proves that this is a quite deliberate concerted effort from the same playbook. The Fed, The B of C, The ECB, The B of E and The B of J are more or less all on the same trajectory and we all know who are the only economic beneficiaries of such policies as QE, keeping interest rates artificially low, etc. and it clearly is not the middle or lower classes.
And worse than that is that elected leaders are the captives of their central banks. See Biden nominating Yellen for Treasury. That says it all about how Obama, Trump and now Biden are more than willing tools of central bank policy. And guess where other Treasury secretaries came from in recent decades…?
Remember that The Fed sets the course, developed and outlined only by the best interests of its stakeholders and SOLE shareholders, namely, the investment and money-centre banks in the United States, UK, Germany, Japan and China who are the only shareholders that control The Fed, a private institution, NOT a government agency, in spite of the fact that the Chair and board nominees are federal appointees. In short, that’s called your classic case of window dressing to hoodwink, or put to sleep, the masses.
American banks were insolvent in 2008 and are once again in that same predicament but it’s okay because The Fed is once again doing their bidding by bailing them out with endless trillions of newly created tax dollars. Joe and Jane taxpayer are stuck with the bill while legislators fight over how many crumbs go to those who are either on the verge or have already lost their jobs, homes, cars, etc. Look to the homeless colonies across the globe and you have your answer as to whom central banks and their natural allies, governments, truly are there to serve: not the poor saps who pay the taxes, assuming they still have jobs to pay future taxes.
Meanwhile, derivatives and margin will never be outlawed in the United States, or elsewhere, and no bank representatives will ever go to jail for their conduct either in 2008 or today. And you know who will continue to laugh at fines in the low billions for having manipulated silver and other precious metal prices through phoney derivative contracts for inexistent actual physical silver, while the band plays on. And why do they laugh do you ask? Because, they don’t mind being fined 1-2 billion by regulators having made between 10 and 25 billion on those trades. So, finally, voilà: a true expression of crony capitalism at its finest that lives and breathes today, as always, and who’s representatives and political stooges laugh all the way to the bank. In the words of central banks: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Just let us control economies and personal finance while the top 2-3% globally keep a beaming. In America, the train initially went off the rails with Reagan, then was struck a glancing blow by Clinton and it’s been all downhill from there in the wake of Bush II, Obama and Trump. And sadly, no, the long bought and paid for American politicians will never fix it.
Great synopsis, Ronald. You are almost as pissed off as I am regarding central banking, but I was raised by a Chartered Accountant so I’ve been mad at the bankers for pretty much my entire life because they don’t think like accountants do.
Economists don’t think like accountants do either, and that’s why I never became an Economist. And following my dad into accounting was never an option because accountants are dull people with not much in the way of creativity to speak of.
Marxism is the only way forward where political revolution will suffice to take down the bankers and cronies. And the way forward post-GFC is broaching my absolute favorite subject matter which is Quantum Mechanics and our only hope of the Second Law of Thermodynamics-Entropy.
Entropy is like Billybob’s boat in Live & Let Die. It’s the fastest boat on the river that will outpace the central bankers and their math Ph.Ds in the board of governors NYC.
BlackRock Inc. is acting the part of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but they can’t keep pace with the volume or flow.
Many on Zero Hedge are predicting yet another crash over the next six months. Entropy will crash the whole system worldwide.
RW
Robert,
The Venezuelan stock market charts speak volumes. In recent times they are on their way to another spectacular hockey-stick style leg up, just like before the previous crashes. At one point, their stock market went straight up for only eight years in a row and then boom.
With the transition in North America from deflation to inflation, our stock markets are starting to predictably shoot for the moon, practically on a daily basis. The hockey-stick pattern is basing now for the Americans. We all know the 70-90% crash is coming but what we don’t know is when. So, I gave up predicting the date and have settled on this: the stock markets will keep going up parabolically until they don’t and then it’s individual financial murder and wipeout. Yes, QE is the major cause but the other is retail investor greed and incredible stupidity, just like the period before every other crash in recent history. Institutional investors are long gone, or in precious metals or precious metal stocks — they’re the ones with brains. Therapeutically speaking, retail investors should be boning up on “Don’t cry for me, Argentina”.
The crash does not have to be predicted because it’s already here. Airlines, Retail Mom & Pop, REITs, Commercial RE, Mall REITs, Sports, Hospitality & Hotels are all sliding into bankruptcy en masse right now, but MSM is not reporting it at the same frequency as they are going under because the bureaucrats don’t want to frighten the public.
Recovery is impossible for the Restaurant industry and Airlines too. Just ask yourself if you would bail out the Airline industry and you have your answer vis-a-vis the decoupling creating the crash. Mandelbrot warned us all about speculative investments way back in 1963. He warned us all again just before he died post-Lehman debacle.
It’s not going to be a K-shaped recovery. That’s just what they want everyone to keep hanging on to for hope. Hope is not a strategy as you well know.
We are likeminded on the groupthink going on though.
RW
Robert,
My supposition has always been that we’re in an eventual L-shaped recovery but I expect the back end of the L to be at least three to four times longer than the front end. Won’t bet the farm on it, though.
I agree that parties of all stripes are to blame for the extreme levels of indebtedness and market distortions that we have today. It’s also true, as you allude, that the Fed and other central banks forced the BoC’s hand and it has little choice but to follow the ZIRP trend. Ultimately though, global bond markets decide where interest rates go. The BoC can temporarily suppress rates through bond buying, and is on track to own 50% of the Canadian bond market within the next year since nobody else is willing to buy our crappy notes at low rates. If this continues it will kill the loonie, and the resulting decline in purchasing power and standard of living for those who rely on wages rather than assets will lead to social unrest if the government doesn’t step in to refill their wallets with UBI….which means more government debt and even more pressure on the CAD, and yet more UBI required. A vicious circle. Until it blows up (and yes, the derivatives bubble could well be the eventual trigger).
I haven’t read Rand, but my understanding is that she was a free-market libertarian who wanted the government (and central bank) to stay out of the economy. Anyone who is truly a Rand acolyte should therefore want the central banks to stop interfering in the bond markets and allow interest rates to float upward to whatever level is dictated by market forces, regardless of any resulting impact on real estate and financial markets. Many people (not necessarily you) confuse crony capitalism with true capitalism.
The reason I fault the Liberals moreso than Conservatives (although both are to blame) is that the housing market in particular went parabolic when the Liberals came to power. Prior to 2016 it was only Vancouver that was in bubble territory. Now, with townhomes in Oshawa selling for $1 million, the entire country has turned into Vancouver. Partly this followed global trends (look at Australia), but the Liberals poured gasoline on the fire by spiking immigration by 40% without expanding housing and infrastructure to accommodate the newcomers. For the life of me I don’t know why Conservatives won’t bring this up. Canadians should be smart enough to understand that criticizing a particular immigration policy is not the same as criticizing immigrants as individuals.
Anyway this is getting off topic, but always happy to go off on a macroeconomic tangent.
Sorry, this was intended for Robert White.
North America was heavily reliant on China’s QE and the speculation that mainland China entrepreneurs were bringing to Vancouver Real Estate all while Harper was in office. Harper’s government incentivized the inflow by not regulating ownership so that Chinese billionaires and Chinese criminals could launder their wealth. The Chinese Government tried making it difficult for those individuals to take money out of the country, but they did it anyways by working through numbered accounts and LLCs to where nobody could track & trace the money being laundered.
I raised Hell with the Government of Canada Finance Department prior to the government shutting down the speculation and speculators. Thankfully, the government listened to me and the RCMP assigned forensic investigators to dig into the money laundering. Harper did not initiate it.
Like you I love Macro.
RW
She’s a woman of sober thought.