Wall Street Journal- World Economic Forum Opens New Probe Into Founder Klaus Schwab
World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab is under investigation by the organization he created after a new whistleblower letter alleged financial and ethical misconduct by the longtime leader and his wife.
Ron Butler’s advice to Canada: focus on what you do well, and that’s primarily energy production. Ditch the green economy nonsense before it’s too late. Above all, stop taking the auto industry for granted. Production can move to the US more easily than most Canadians think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BffUL9aFL84
In a fiat monetary system in which exponentially rising debt is a feature, not a bug, borrowers are always going to need relief in the form of lower interest rates. So much for “higher for longer”. Central banks are being a bit stubborn right now, but it won’t last.
That left the benchmark prime rate stuck at 4.95 per cent, more than a percentage point above its 20-year average of 3.87 per cent.
Since lower rates tend to inflate home prices, many bargain-hunting homebuyers were high-fiving the rate freeze. Most floating-rate borrowers and real estate stakeholders, however, were left groaning.
With Canadian housing prices as high as they are, the last thing anyone needs is another round of “turbocharging”.
But then again, with the unemployment rate in Toronto sitting at 8.7%, it’s only matter of time until interest rates go back to zero so we can jump start an economy in which everyone just builds houses for everyone else.
The Bank of Canada needs to cut interest rates to get housing activity moving again or risk Canada’s economic growth, economists warn.
But two economists also think interest rates remain too high to turbocharge the sector, which is a major contributor to Canada’s economy and also highly sensitive to interest rates.
As Heresy Financial podcaster Joseph Brown explains, in order to understand the current stock market troubles you have to look beyond tariffs.
“…when markets start to crash, you don’t sell what you want, but what you can. And during this recent stock market crash hedge funds have been absolutely dumping stocks but it seems like it’s just not enough which is why they’ve been forced to get out of the basis trade and dumping their treasuries which has been driving yields much higher…”
A housing market swamped by exponentially rising debt coupled with a period of sharply rising interest rates is bound to head south sooner or later. But not to worry, we can just tell ourselves that it’s all due to tariffs.
Home sales fell 4.8% in March from February, and together with declines in the previous three months were down 20% from their recent high, posted in November, CREA said on Tuesday.
On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, sales were down 9.3% on an annual basis and were the lowest for the month since 2009.
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and behold the dawning of a new Bronze Age.
I’m looking at you Newfoundland.
Telegraph- Labour launches net zero crackdown on boats
Under the maritime decarbonisation strategy, boat owners will be forced to swap out diesel engines, petrol generators and wood-fired stoves for electric motors, batteries and extra shore power hookups. There will also be tax rises on marine fuel, with new boats required to be entirely electric.
European leaders have gotten the message from Washington about doing more for their own defense and for Ukraine, too. They are talking tough when it comes to supporting Ukraine and about protecting their own borders, and they are standing up to a demanding and even hostile Trump administration.
But there is an inevitable gap between talk and action, and unity is fracturing already, especially when it comes to spending and borrowing money in a period of low growth and high debt. […]
Kaja Kallas, the former prime minister of Estonia who is now the chief foreign and security official for the European Union, has been a forceful advocate for supporting Ukraine as a first line of European defense against an aggressive, militarized Russia.
But it has been a rocky start for Ms. Kallas. Her effort to get the E.U. to provide up to 40 billion euros (more than $43 billion) to Ukraine through a small, fixed percentage levy on each country’s national income has gone nowhere.
Her backup proposal, for an added €5 billion as a first step toward providing Ukraine two million artillery shells this year, was also rejected by Italy, Slovakia and even France, an E.U. official said, speaking anonymously in accordance with diplomatic practice. The countries insisted that contributions to Ukraine remain voluntary, bilateral and not required by Brussels.
Given this information, it’s pointless asking Europe to contribute naval assets to keeping their Red Sea lanes open. Maybe we should face the facts: the Global World is a luxury we can’t afford because the global citizens won’t pay to manage entropy on a planetary scale.
Perhaps the New World will look like an updated version the Old World we used to live in. A world of relatively culturally homogenous countries surrounded by tariffs with defended frontiers. It’s what we can afford.
If anyone believes that you are “sticking it to the man” by withdrawing all the funds from your bank account in “cash”, think again. Our fiat currency system has got you coming and going. It’s not a bug; it was designed that way.
In fiat, your only real choice is this: if you wish to access credit at all, you must participate in a system where the coercive extension of credit creates an exponentially rising debt doom loop that all must shoulder the burden of.
The final collapse of fiat will occur when the burden of debt exceeds the ability of any debtor, no matter how large their balance sheet, to service it. When lost capital can no longer be replaced with fresh capital from a more creditworthy institution, one can arrive at a situation where bank notes are literally backed by nothing. A bank note backed by nothing can purchase nothing. It will not matter how many are released into the economy at that point. They will be worthless. It will be the Zimbabwe solution in spades.
Ross McKitrick- Carney to lead Canada after trying for years to defund it
Carney is a climate zealot. He may try to fool Canadians into thinking he wants new pipelines, liquified natural gas (LNG) terminals and other hydrocarbon infrastructure, but he doesn’t. Far from it. He wants half the existing ones gone by 2030 and the rest soon after.
Higher for longer sure didn’t last very long, did it?
The Bank of Canada is expected to cut its interest rate by 25 basis points on Wednesday, amid trade uncertainty with the United States.
Following Friday’s jobs report, which showed the Canadian economy added just 1,100 jobs in February, market bets for a March cut by the central bank went above 80 per cent.
A closer examination of Carney’s elite network—guided by the principle that long-standing relationships of trust and shared financial interests will shape governance—reveals a constellation of global influencers deeply tied to the World Economic Forum and China’s trade and finance arms, particularly the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). At its core, this network of remarkable figures—whose stated goals center on consolidating financial power across borders to coordinate carbon-reduction policies and progressive social outcomes—includes not just Carney and Trudeau but also former Canadian ambassador to China Dominic Barton, Trudeau campaign backers Mark Wiseman and Gerald Butts, and AIIB’s Jin Liqun, reportedly a senior Chinese Communist Party operative.
Years of interest rates at near zero levels will do strange things, like incentivizing investors to throw highly leveraged capital at all manner of “sure things”.
In one stark example, two levered ETFs tied to Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin-hoarding company Strategy, which were together worth more than $5 billion at one point, are down about 40% in three days. Leveraged funds, promising two times the daily performance of Nvidia Corp., Tesla Inc., Amazon.com Inc. have tumbled. Triple-leveraged bets on innovation and semiconductor stocks have slid 20%.
A seldom mentioned phenomenon in these days of monetary madness is the ongoing spectacle of central banks actually losing money. Not a small amount of money either. More like $11 billion per month for the US Federal Reserve alone. But I’m sure that’s nothing to worry about.
Before 2022, the Fed remitted $5 billion to $10 billion per month to the US Treasury; between 2011 and 2021, the Fed’s remittances totaled over $920 billion. Since then, the Fed has run a monthly operating loss between $5 billion and $11 billion per month, and is thus unable to remit any funds to the Treasury. These accumulating Fed losses are classified as a “deferred asset,” a negative liability whose value is the cumulative amount of the earnings shortfall.
Yet another sign that the marginal consumer is clearly tapped out and no longer able to spend freely to sustain gimmicky marketing.
Hooters — which has about 300 locations nationwide — has faced increasing financial strain as traffic declines at its kitschy restaurants, leading to the closure of several outposts.
The Atlanta-based company has been working alongside turnaround consultants from Accordion Partners to address its financial difficulties, particularly its debt burden.
Brian Wang; (link fixed)
There is massive cost cutting with DOGE. The scale of the cuts could actually enable eliminating or replacing the $2.4 trillion per year individual income tax. I know the knee jerk reaction is that it cannot be done. This is a deeper dive into it that shows a lot more is possible than people recognize.
The Telegraph- Blackout Britain threat rises on collapse of Norwegian government
The Norwegian government collapsed this week following a row over EU green energy laws. A junior coalition partner in the government quit in protest at plans to implement the policies, amid a broader rise in energy nationalism in the country. Experts said the collapse raised questions over Britain’s reliance on Norwegian energy imports to keep the lights on. Last weekend, Norway accounted for 4pc of the UK’s power, coming via cables that run under the North Sea.
The Telegraph- Norway is a cautionary tale: our worst net-zero fears are being realised
Norway’s government, whose coalition ended this week, is not the first to collapse over bad energy policies linked to mad climate politics. That title incontestably goes to Northern Ireland in 2017, where poor implementation of the UK’s renewable heat scheme led to widespread suspected fraud (heating empty sheds to claim subsidies) and the end of the power sharing agreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP. It may, however, be even more consequential for the UK.
Same as the old boss.
