Print more money? Check. Bring in low-wage workers? Check. Boost productivity and generate real growth? Nope.
Economics
63% of Canadian non-owners have ‘given up’ on ever buying a home
“As housing prices rise, inflation continues and interest rates go up… we can see that there’s a bunch of Canadians who have kind of given up on the idea of home ownership,” says Gregory Jack, vice-president of public affairs at Ipsos.
Those sentiments are highest in British Columbia (74 per cent), Quebec (72 per cent) and Ontario (62 per cent), but lowest in the Prairies and Atlantic Canada, the polling shows.
31% of Canadians don’t earn enough to pay their bills: Survey
Thirty-one per cent of respondents to an Ipsos survey conducted for MNP said they don’t earn enough to cover bills and debt payments, and almost half of all respondents (49 per cent) said they are within $200 of insolvency.
Trudeau’s crackdown on real-estate investors won’t work. Here’s why.
Justin Trudeau’s government snagged the headlines it wanted last week when it was widely reported the budget would impose a temporary ban on foreign investors snapping up more of Canada’s over-priced real-estate.
The headlines made the federal Liberals look aggressive, and even a bit patriotic, in their apparent determination to combat offshore speculation in Canadian housing.
But the government’s legislative moves were as vacuous as Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland’s trendy-sounding rhetoric this week, when she said the inability of young Canadians to afford a home today is an “intergenerational injustice.” That’s before she reverted to industry platitudes about building more supply.
Bloodletting As a Remedy
Conventional economic wisdom says that in a time of economic stress, raising taxes is a bad idea. In that light, the recent increase in carbon tax & proposed increases in other taxes defy sense and can only be attributed to messianic zeal.
Razor’s edge: Canada’s Liberals eye more spending as inflation burns
Canada’s Liberals find themselves in a bind ahead of this week’s budget: the economy has recovered from the pandemic, yet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has pledged billions in new stimulus, a political poker chip that could further torch runaway inflation.
Biden Out to Destroy the US Financial Markets
The reason Biden needs war is very simple. The world monetary system is collapsing. The negative interest rates in Europe since 2014 have wiped out all the pension funds that needed 8% to break even. This is what is being the Guaranteed Basic Income because the politicians have destroyed the future of pensions. Even in the USA, 100% of social security is invested in US government bonds that pay well below 8% and this has undermined the fund going forward. Biden is following the FDR playbook and since COVID failed to produce the Great Depression they were counting on, they are shifting to PHASE 2 which is war.
CRTC Approves Rogers-Shaw Merger, Decision Called ‘Disastrous’ by Consumer Group
“The CRTC claims their modified version of the deal is in the best interest of Canadians; in what world is that true? Every single guarantee Rogers is making to secure our watchdogs’ cooperation is a short-term payment or unenforceable promise; the long-term outcome is clearly a net loss to everyone outside the Rogers and Shaw families,” added Hatfield.
Nancy Pelosi claims more government spending is ‘reducing the national debt’
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi defied basic economics on Friday, claiming that increased government spending is “reducing national debt” — not contributing to the economic crisis.
Paul Krugman dreams up nonexistent Biden economic success story
On cue, Paul Krugman, a New York Times columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist, expressed his frustration last Thursday at the apparent disconnect between the public’s perceptions of the economic health of the country and the statistics.
I say “on cue” because President Joe Biden’s approval rating remains in the dumpster. The poor economy is one major reason.
Not so, according to Krugman. The economy is “booming,” said Krugman. He noted that Biden’s recent State of the Union made that clear. Last year, the United States added 6.5 million jobs, which was more than ever created in a single year. Krugman fact-checks these claims and declares them “entirely correct.” Of course, to any sensible person, these added jobs were not created in any sense of the word. The economy is still, by most employment measures, attempting to recover from the 2020 lockdowns and the associated transfer of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street.
De-dollarization
These things take time, and I am not saying that the culminating moment of de-dollarization happens tomorrow or next week. But make certain it IS happening and there may be no better opportunity than now for Russia to take the sanctions the West has placed upon them and run with it. If they do, the long-term decoupling of the Russian and Asian worlds from the dollar as this plays out over 10-20-50 years reestablishes the global order.
Can protectionism bring back my father’s world?
… And make no mistake, we need to be ready for that war. Xi Jinping, unlike Boris Yeltsin, isn’t going to go gaga over the hyperabundance of the American grocery store. We hollowed out our domestic manufacturing sector in the hope that China would liberalize. Instead, they’ve perfected authoritarianism, and now they’re coming for us.
“The era in which the US acted arbitrarily in the world under the pretext of so-called ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ is over. The day will come eventually when the US military, who killed innocent civilians in other countries, will be brought to justice,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said in response to Biden’s recent Democracy Summit.
America’s Seventies Show—the Sequel The stage is set for an economic replay.
“It’s tough to make predictions,” Yogi Berra famously observed, “especially about the future.” Perhaps, then, we should forgive the Biden administration’s Team Transitory for its months of erroneous forecasts about inflation—now running at a 31-year high. What we should not ignore or forgive, however, is dissembling about inflation’s true causes. Many on the left blame corporate greed and unfettered monopoly power. Progressives are eager to deploy the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department in pursuit of more control over the private sector. But greed and market power were presumably just as prevalent over the many years when inflation ran between 1 percent and 2 percent as they are now. Talk of “profiteering” is at best a distraction and at worst a misguided rationale for regulatory actions likely to have bad effects.
Trudeau risks stoking inflation with stimulus plans: Scotia economist
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland is expected to give the government’s first major statement on taxes and spending since Trudeau’s Liberal Party won re-election on Sept. 20, including tens of billions in new spending. She should refrain from adding that stimulus to an already hot inflationary environment, Scotiabank’s Rebekah Young said Monday.
“Great Resignation” continues: 4.4 million quit jobs in September
Where have all the workers gone? Employers have asked that all year, and rather than improve, the situation has gotten worse. September walk-outs set a new record with 4.4 million American workers quitting, breaking a record set the previous month of 4.3 million in what people are calling the “Great Resignation”.