Good Morning All –
In the wake of the disaster in California earlier this week, I’m going to Re-Up some previous writings on the issue of various immigrant groups into the North American trucking market.
A thread of threads + Intel
— Gord ‘Anti-Social Media Defluencer’ Magill (@GordMagill) October 25, 2025
But wait, there’s more.
Gord Magill has a book coming out…
I thought our new PM was just the guy we needed to stand up to the Americans. Oh, well…..
American truck maker Paccar Inc. is laying off 300 more factory workers in Quebec ahead of a 25 per cent import tariff to be imposed by the U.S. next month.
The factory in Sainte-Thérèse, a Montreal suburb, manufactures Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks and relies heavily on revenue from the United States.
Voters want lots of free stuff, so maybe those things will just pay for themselves, right? Unfortunately, I don’t know of a political party with currently elected members which would make a serious dent in any of that spending.
For the 2025-2026 fiscal year, Desjardins is projecting a $70-billion deficit, although the report acknowledges some estimates from other sources have been as high as $100 billion.
“There is a lot to unpack in the run-up to what will be a truly unprecedented federal budget,” said the report. “Deficits could rise to levels not seen in decades outside of a recession or pandemic, and the debt-to-GDP ratio is likely to be headed in the wrong direction.”
Apparently no one needs them anywhere else either.
General Motors is ending production of its BrightDrop electric delivery van in Ingersoll, Ont. in the latest blow to the province’s automotive sector.
The company says the decision is related to low demand for the model and it isn’t moving production elsewhere.
While monetary commodities like gold and silver continue to set new daily records in terms of their dollar price, it’s interesting to note that the dollar prices of non-monetary commodities like oil and copper continue to slide. That’s probably because economies tipping into recession don’t need as much oil and industrial metals as growing ones.
Gold prices rose by over 2% on Monday, buoyed by expectations of further U.S. interest rate cuts and sustained safe-haven demand, as investors awaited upcoming U.S.-China trade talks and inflation data out of the U.S. this week.
But zero percent interest rates ought to fix all those problems, right?
Meanwhile, traders are pricing in a 99% chance that the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates next week, with another cut in December. Gold, a non-yielding asset, tends to do well in low-interest rate environments.
At this point, I doubt that any measures are going to amount to anything other than flogging a dead horse.
Ottawa said the corporation is losing about $10 million per day, despite providing a $1-billion injection earlier this year to keep it operational. Since 2018, Canada Post has accumulated more than $5 billion in losses including more than $1 billion last year alone.
But Canada Post’s business model is meant to support communities across the country — especially those in remote locations who are hardest for private firms to reach — rather than chase profits, said Ann Armstrong, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Management and Innovation.
“There is something sacrosanct about a postal service,” she said.
“It seems to me the model is perfectly viable and needs to be preserved, if perhaps costs and so on need to be adjusted.”
For anyone who thinks that natural gas exports are going to magically replace job losses in the Canadian auto sector, think again.
Just five vessels sailed from the terminal in Kitimat, B.C. during the month of September, LNG Canada confirmed last week. It was short of the seven that had been expected, RBC Capital Markets said in note which pointed to a slower ramp-up of production at the Shell plc-led project since operations began in July.
Roughly 15 tankers per month will be required once the facility reaches full capacity, RBC noted.
It’s becoming a little clearer every day as to why gold continues to set records. Debt financing problems in the financial system don’t appear to be going away.
RealTruck’s response to its debt crisis has centered on aggressive restructuring. In a notable move, the company executed a debt-for-equity swap, converting its 0.00% 2027 Convertible Notes into 7.00% 2030 Senior Secured Convertible Notes. This maneuver reduced principal debt but came at the cost of issuing over 316 million new shares, diluting existing shareholders and sending its stock to record lows…
RealTruck’s journey through its debt crisis exemplifies the high-stakes calculus of corporate restructuring. While its debt-for-equity swap and cost-cutting measures have stabilized liquidity, the company’s reliance on volatile markets and its elevated leverage ratio remain significant hurdles.
It’s not a great sign when the mainstream financial media starts to pick up on news items concerning lending fraud. It makes you wonder how deep the rot really is.
CEO Jamie Dimon offered a mea culpa and a warning Tuesday when discussing the losses his bank experienced from the downfall of subprime auto lender Tricolor Holdings, saying, “It is not our finest moment” and “when you see one cockroach, there’s probably more.”
But the fall of Tricolor and a larger bankruptcy of auto parts supplier First Brands have captured attention on Wall Street, and investors are looking for signs that credit among commercial customers is weakening.
Rolling blackouts. A worthless currency. A once-mighty industry on life support. Doctors, engineers and students leaving in droves in search of a future. That all sounds like Venezuela, but I’m talking about Cuba.
As Venezuela’s crisis deepens, another — quieter but just as dangerous — is unfolding just 90 miles from Florida. The drama may be smaller, but the danger is real. If Venezuela is wobbling, Cuba is starting to fall.
On Sept. 10, Cuba’s entire electrical grid failed, plunging nearly 10 million people into darkness. It was the island’s fourth nationwide blackout in less than a year. Even before that, much of the country was losing power for half the day. Officials blamed machinery; Cubans blamed the system.
The country’s energy network has become a patchwork of corroded plants and emergency repairs. Over the past 14 months, it has suffered a dozen nationwide outages. Years of neglect and the burning of high-sulfur crude have crippled its power stations. As U.S. sanctions tighten on Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s ability to keep its ally supplied with oil has withered.
Fuel shipments from Venezuela — Havana’s economic lifeline for two decades — now fluctuate wildly, sometimes dropping below 10,000 barrels a day before rebounding. Russia and Mexico have stepped in with emergency cargoes, but neither offers stability. Without steady deliveries, plants sputter and nights become suffocating. In some towns, residents cook by candlelight, charge phones at work, and sleep on rooftops to escape the heat.
Another green fad is close to biting the dust.
Beyond Meat Inc. tumbled the most since the company went public in 2019 after the troubled plant-based protein producer said nearly all creditors had accepted a debt swap that will lead to a substantial dilution of shareholders.
The stock sank as much as 58% to 84.5 cents on Monday, its worst-ever intraday decline. The shares had already fallen 47% this year through Friday.
Good conversation.
Who’s bidding up the dollar price of monetary metals today? Central banks? Investors who lost tens of billions in Bitcoin on Friday? Whatever the case, the barbarous relic is really shining.
Spot silver climbed as much as 3.7% above $52 an ounce, exceeding last week’s peak, while gold traded near $4,100, building on a record-breaking run of eight weekly gains.
In reality, it’s a way of saying “we’re moving out” while trying not to make it look too obvious.
Linamar Corp. says it’s expanding its U.S. manufacturing footprint through a US$300 million deal to buy select North American assets of Aludyne Inc.
Millions of young Gen z guys just got their entire net worth wiped out in seconds.
10x leverage and a 10% flash crash will do that to you.
These people will be scarred from risk assets for life.
— Zoomer (@zoomyzoomm) October 10, 2025
One possible reason why gold is setting new records in dollar terms is fear of default; i.e. a growing realization that some governments are on the verge of stiffing their creditors. Today, default is becoming a possibility not just for third world backwaters, but for large economies such as France. The reasons are simple enough, as this video explains. France is spending itself into oblivion thanks to pensions that pay out more in benefits than a working person earns.
What did anyone think was going to materialize out of this trip? All that remains is for the new governor’s water carriers to invent some positive spin for what is really another political loss.
Prime Minister Mark Carney is set to return to Ottawa today with no deals to remove U.S. tariffs from Canadian goods, but he’s leaving his key minister on Canada-U.S. trade behind to keep pressing the Canadian case.
Despite all the hoopla about debt-driven GDP growth as a sign of a booming economy, the real economy apparently didn’t get that memo from the Keynesians. Shrinking business investment means less demand for basic commodities like oil.
They were about to get some life-changing news. Their employer, a major oil producer almost as old as Canada, was going to reveal a dramatic shift in strategy. Imperial would be selling its sprawling headquarters in Calgary, cutting hundreds of jobs and potentially outsourcing many of those positions overseas.
One worker said they had suspected something was up, but nothing that seismic.
Canada to avoid recession in 2025; economist predicts ‘firehose of monetary and fiscal policy support’ https://t.co/0j2aZsF08X
“After a steep decline, we’re coming back a little bit,” Desjardins told Yahoo Finance Canada in an interview. “We’re in this period of slow growth, just treading water.”…
“While not an economic rebound to write home about, it does suggest that a 2025 recession in Canada isn’t a foregone conclusion,” he wrote in a report earlier this month. “The Canadian economy isn’t out of the woods yet.”
The federal government is due to release its fall budget in November. Prime Minister Mark Carney has said it will feature “the biggest investment in this country’s future in a generation.”
“A leak from a senior official [suggests] that the Government of Canada’s deficit could reach $100 billion this year when the long‑overdue federal budget is released on November 4,” Bartlett wrote.
Maybe it’s tent sales that will bring Canada out of this recession?