The marginal home buyer can’t muster much of a bid these days, and who could blame him? When is this going to start hitting the balance sheets of lenders?

Vancouver home sales activity fell again in May as buyers continued to sit on the sidelines, the city’s real estate board said Tuesday.

Residential sales in the region totalled 2,228 last month, an 18.5 per cent drop from the same month a year earlier, Greater Vancouver Realtors said. Sales levels are 30.5 per cent below the 10-year seasonal average.

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.

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 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.