… the economy capped off a volatile year with a contraction in the final quarter of 2025.
The agency said Friday that real gross domestic product declined 0.6 per cent on an annualized basis in the fourth quarter, falling short of expectations from the Bank of Canada and most economists for flat growth. Real GDP per capita was unchanged in the fourth quarter.
Fire Them All
Here’s hoping that Javier Milei’s labor market reforms continue to gain traction. Notice how the news item is framed in such a way as to draw no connection between the undeserved power of Peronist labor unions and “frequent economic shocks”.
The bill, which grants employers greater flexibility in matters of hiring, firing, severance and collective bargaining, has drawn fierce opposition from labor unions and their Peronist allies, who argue it would roll back measures that protect workers from abuse and Argentina’s notoriously frequent economic shocks.
I, For One, Welcome Our New Self-Driving Overlords
This could never happen to your bank.
… a weeks-long hacker campaign against the Mexican government culminated in January with a massive data theft of some of the federal government’s most sensitive information.
“By the time it was over,” Let’s Data Science reported on Wednesday, “the attacker had stolen 150 gigabytes of sensitive data — including 195 million taxpayer records, voter registration files, government employee credentials, and civil registry data.” […]
Summing up a report published Wednesday by Israeli cybersecurity startup Gambit Security, Bloomberg wrote *Archived here that some “unknown Claude user” simply made up “Spanish-language prompts for the chatbot to act as an elite hacker, finding vulnerabilities in government networks, writing computer scripts to exploit them and determining ways to automate data theft.”
Money For Nothing
If John Risley typifies the mindset of the business community in this country, we’re all done for.
He sold the company in 2021 for $1 billion. But instead of enjoying his money in retirement, he kept backing massive projects with global ambitions, including a stalled wind-powered hydrogen energy operation in western Newfoundland.
Risley was in Ottawa in December to drum up support for a deepwater port in the Arctic.
Under the increasing interest rates, the US$250-million loan inflated into a debt reaching nearly US$1 billion, the documents said. CFFI planned to sell off a few major investments and pay off the debt, but the sales never happened, the papers said.
Ones And Zeroes
Money has to be the most marketable commodity, not lines of code on a hard drive. Investors in the latter are finding that out the hard way.
Bitcoin is now down 24% this year and remains roughly 47% below its October all-time high.
The largest failure so far this year has been Blockfills, a midsize prime broker that halted deposits and withdrawals earlier this month amid the decline in bitcoin prices.
Gradually, Then Suddenly
Canada's condo crash "Condo prices are still plummeting in parts of this country and it's causing major money troubles for people who bought in early."
"…No one escapes. Every single person is closing on a unit that they bought five years ago that's worth less than what they… pic.twitter.com/AbZ3IjSDjd
— cbcwatcher (@cbcwatcher) February 23, 2026
Now, factor in the crash coming to vacation condos in Mexico.
James Carville Eats Mice
We’re weeks away from learning that V was a documentary, and we’ve been living in it for 40 years. Which pretty much explains everything.
— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) February 20, 2026
Thank You For Your Attention To This Matter
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) February 20, 2026
Circling The Drain
Home sales are plunging, particularly in Ontario, because no one is ever eager to sell below their expectations and/or at a loss. But buyers are in the driver’s seat now, and when the dam breaks we can sit back and watch the fire sales.
Canada’s real estate market opened 2026 in a slump, as national home sales fell 5.8 per cent month-over-month in January, while actual, non-seasonally adjusted transactions were down 16.2 per cent from a year earlier…
It’s Probably Nothing
Just insane 5 more tankers have launched in the past hour, cant emphasise enough how big this airlift is. https://t.co/ggVpaGHBXY
— WarMonitor🇺🇦🇬🇧 (@WarMonitor3) February 18, 2026
Watching 36 USAF aircraft – 22 tankers, 13 transports and an E-3 AWACS over CONUS and Europe over the last 4 hours.
New Governor, Same As The Old Governor
P.E.I. has the highest food inflation rate in the country at 10.1%, followed by Newfoundland and Nova Scotia at 9.2%. Quebec has the lowest, at 5.4%.
— The Food Professor (@FoodProfessor) February 17, 2026
Let them eat Chow Mein.
Trick Shot
It’s Official
Self Driving Stock Values
I thought this AI thing was all win/win.
Cisco Systems dropped 12.3% despite likewise topping analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue last quarter. The tech giant indicated that it may make less profit off each $1 of revenue during the current quarter than it did in the past quarter.
More broadly, questions are rising about whether businesses that are spending heavily on AI will end up seeing high-enough profits and productivity to make the investments worth it.
It’s Probably Nothing
Update: It’s been lifted.
🚨BREAKING: FAA just ordered a full halt on ALL flights to and from El Paso, Texas, for the next 10 days.
Reason? “Unspecified special security reasons.”
No details, no explanation, just grounded.pic.twitter.com/KaQfZaTxzh
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) February 11, 2026
Durham Man
Durham Regional Police- Six Facing Charges After Human Trafficking Investigation
In January 2026, Project Firebird saw multiple individuals arrange meetings for sexual services with minors, despite the suspects being fully aware that they were communicating with minors.
Don’t worry though..
All were released on an Undertaking.
Today in Pedophilia and Rape
Basil the Great- Two Tier Policing
Gad Saad- Indigenous men don’t rape. They offer ancestral love.
CTV- Does Prime Minister Mark Carney appear in the Epstein files? Yes, but not in a meaningful capacity.
Former prime minister Justin Trudeau’s name also appears in the files a total of 27 times
Bonus content- UK HOSPITAL HIRES NURSE FOR INCEST BABIES
Money For Nothing
If some of the AI generated nonsense I’ve run across lately is going to become commonplace, it’s little wonder that investors are getting skittish.
Amazon.com shares slid 9% on Friday after the company outlined a planned $200 billion capital outlay for the year, stoking investor concerns about the scale of Big Tech’s spending on artificial intelligence.
Are we headed for what some are calling the Dead Internet Theory?
But the dead internet theory goes even further. Many of the accounts that engage with such content also appear to be managed by artificial intelligence agents. This creates a vicious cycle of artificial engagement, one that has no clear agenda and no longer involves humans at all.
I Hear The Distant Rumble Of An Election Window Closing
Statistics Canada reported the country lost 25,000 jobs in January, with the “decrease” in unemployment driven by Canadians giving up and dropping out of the labour market altogether.
