Category: It’s Probably Nothing

Mortgage Blues

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing 44 Comments

It’s rather stunning how rich some homeowners thought they were when interest rates crashed to near zero and the real estate market began to soar. Today, though, at least a few of them don’t feel so rich anymore.

I have two questions: Firstly, why did the bank approve this inflated mortgage in the first place? Secondly, how many more like this were also approved?

At the time, the property was listed for $465,000, but Hartmann says she paid $200,000 over the asking price.

“It was quite ludicrous, there were bidding wars and it was just really stressful,” said Hartmann.

But just seven months later, she was laid off from her well-paying job at Microsoft and at the same time, soaring interest rates nearly doubled her mortgage.

Hartmann said she tried to sell her house through two different realtors and ended up handing the keys over to Scotiabank in November.

Y2Kyoto: Coming Soon To A Canada Near You

Gradually Then Suddenly Y2Kyoto 43 Comments

Robert Bryce: The Deindustrialization Of Europe In Five Charts

Germany is once again, the “sick man of Europe.” But it’s not just Germany. All across Europe, industrial capacity is shrinking. Last month, Tata Steel announced it would close its last two blast furnaces in Britain by the end of this year, a move that will result “in the loss of up to 2,800 jobs at its Port Talbot steelworks in Wales.”

In January 2023, Slovalco announced it was permanently closing its aluminum smelters in Slovakia after 70 years of operation. The company, Slovakia’s biggest electricity consumer, said it was shuttering its smelters due to high power costs.

Europe drove itself into the ditch. Bad policy decisions, including net-zero delusions, the headlong rush to alt-energy, aggressive decarbonization mandates, and the strategic blunder of relying on Russian natural gas that’s no longer available, are driving the deindustrialization. How bad is it? Mario Loyola, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, wrote a sharp January 28 article in The Hill about Europe’s meltdown. According to European Commission data, industrial output in Europe “plummeted 5.8% in the 12 months ending November 2023,” he wrote. “Capital goods production was down nearly 8.7%. Investment in plants and equipment has plummeted.”

The result of all that lousy policy: staggering increases in electricity prices. Loyola notes that European electricity prices “have settled at triple their pre-pandemic levels.” Energy analyst Rupert Darwall recently reported that large businesses in Britain now pay up to five times more for juice than in 2004.

Gradually, Then Suddenly

Democrats Gradually Then Suddenly RINO 12 Comments

‘most predictable crisis’ in history…

… the U.S. economy is resting atop a public debt exceeding $34 trillion, with its debt-to-GDP ratio sitting at around 120%. Perhaps not the blessing the Founding Fathers had once envisioned.

Now, alarm bells are beginning to ring with increasing frequency and volume.

Jamie Dimon says Washington is facing a global market “rebellion” because of the tab it is racking up, while Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan believes it’s time to stop admiring the problem and instead do something about it.

Elsewhere The Black Swan author Nassim Taleb says the economy is in a “death spiral”, while Fed chairman Jerome Powell says it’s past time to have an “adult conversation” about fiscal responsibility.

And despite the issue being the “most predictable crisis we’ve ever had” according to former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan—a summary Dimon agrees with—it’s an item that isn’t yet top of the political agenda.

Zerohedge: Household Debt Tops $17.5 Trillion

A Dying Industry

Climate Cult Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing 30 Comments

If the insanity doesn’t stop soon, there won’t be anyone producing automobiles of any type.

Not to put too fine a point on the state of the EV market, but Ford is losing $38,000 per EV. This means the more EVs they sell, the poorer the company gets. They made $10 billion dollars in profits last year, yet the balance sheet shows they lost about $5 billion just on EVs. This puts them in the bizarre position that they could theoretically give away the entire EV production line and boost company profits by 50%. It’s that bad…

Indeed it’s so truly awful, that the UK Lords are calling for the government to counter the misinformation campaign filled with “mistruths”.  The industry must be at deaths door.

 

DEI The Friendly Skies

I, Napoleon It's Probably Nothing The Tolerant Left 35 Comments

@MattWalshBlog

BREAKING: I’ve obtained internal footage of senior officials at the FAA’s Flight Program Operations division — which is responsible for all aspects of aircraft operations — workshopping a plan to reduce the number of white males in aviation. The footage begins with FAA acting deputy chief operating officer Angela McCullough saying more workers need to go from “ramp to cockpit,” meaning she wants to see more baggage handlers become airline pilots.

It gets worse.

A second source — a pilot I’ve confirmed works at Delta — tells me that Delta has recently promoted a trans-identifying pilot who repeatedly received bad reviews from captains. According to the source, this pilot “would likely not have” survived probation if he weren’t trans. […] This industry-wide embrace of overt mental illness afflicts every aspect of aviation. Another source told me that his job is to design advanced military systems, but he’s constantly side-tracked by DEI proposals like “gender inclusive seatbelts.”

Missing And Misappropriated Aboriginal Money?

Chief Big Screen TV Cronies Gradually Then Suddenly It's Probably Nothing We Are All Treaty People 26 Comments

If your reserve was sitting on substantial oil and gas deposits you’d have to have pretty lousy management to lose track of $120 million, but accountability is probably an outdated artifact of the colonial mindset anyway.

Public financial reports for Frog Lake First Nation show the band is short $120 million in net assets over a five-year time period between 2013 and 2018.

The records show the band-owned business called Frog Lake Energy Resources has been losing millions of dollars since 2015.

APTN reached out the current Chief Greg Desjarlais and initially agreed to an interview but later cancelled.

In a virtual meeting with community members he says that an audit is unnecessary.

Everything Is Fine

CreepyJoeBiden Democrats It's Probably Nothing 26 Comments

CENTCOM Statement on U.S. Strikes in Iraq and Syria

At 4:00 p.m. (EST) Feb. 02, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) forces conducted airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force and affiliated militia groups. U.S. military forces struck more than 85 targets, with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from United States. The airstrikes employed more than 125 precision munitions. The facilities that were struck included command and control operations centers, intelligence centers, rockets, and missiles, and unmanned aerial vehicle storages, and logistics and munition supply chain facilities of militia groups and their IRGC sponsors who facilitated attacks against U.S. and Coalition forces.

What Happened To All My Free Stuff?

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Reset It's Probably Nothing 26 Comments

No doubt all the Keynesian court economists will tell us that the solution to this problem would be to forgive the loans in their entirety.

Last month, small businesses faced a deadline to repay interest-free loans of C$60,000 ($44,676) made available to each of them during the pandemic. Of the 900,000 who had taken the government support, a fifth have not yet repaid their loans, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Monday.

Mortgage Market Blowup?

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Reset It's Probably Nothing 16 Comments

I’ve been expecting an implosion in the mortgage market for some time given the rise in interest rates relative to the debt that has to be supported, but so far that isn’t happening. It seems our friend Ron Butler has become privy to information that indicates a black swan event may not be far off, however.

Thread reader here.

 

Don’t Worry, It’s Transitory

CreepyJoeBiden Democrats Gradually Then Suddenly 11 Comments

UPS announces 12,000 job cuts

The workforce reductions will save the company about $1 billion in costs, CEO Carol Tomé said on a company earnings call.

“2023 was a unique, and quite candidly, difficult and disappointing year. We experienced declines in volume, revenue and operating profits and all three of our business segments,” Tomé said.

Shares of the package giant dipped nearly 6% in premarket trading.

Bidenomics: Last week, in a campaign stop at a Pennsylvania coffee shop, President Biden seemed shocked at the $6.00 price of his smoothie.

The Blowout Economy

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Reset 16 Comments

Since GDP simply adds up all the borrowing and spending in an economy regardless of who did the borrowing and spending and for what purpose, it’s no shock that recent GDP numbers are higher than expected. Peter St. Onge notes that we are actually getting a whole lot less bang for every borrowed buck.

 

Don’t Mess With Texas

CreepyJoeBiden Gradually Then Suddenly 24 Comments

It’s on.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued a defiant statement on Wednesday pushing back against President Joe Biden’s attempts to stop Texas from securing its borders against the millions of illegal aliens pouring into the state thanks to Biden’s reckless border policies.

Abbott’s statement comes after the U.S. Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration earlier this week, ruling that it could remove or cut through razor wire the state has deployed to stop illegal aliens from crossing the Rio Grande into the state.

Read it here.

“The Executive Branch of the United States has a constitutional duty to enforce federal laws protecting States, including immigration laws on the books right now,” reads the statement. “President Biden has instructed his agencies to ignore federal statutes that mandate the detention of illegal immigrants. The failure of the Biden Administration to fulfill the duties imposed by Article IV, § 4 has triggered Article I, § 10, Clause 3, which reserves to this State the right of self-defense. For these reasons, I have already declared an invasion under Article I, § 10, Clause 3 to invoke Texas’s constitutional authority to defend and protect itself. That authority is the supreme law of the land and supersedes any federal statutes to the contrary.”

Universal Basic Insolvency

Alternative Subsidy Gradually Then Suddenly nannystate 28 Comments

If our experience with pandemic “emergency benefits” is any guide, when you pay people not to work, then lo and behold they are unlikely to…work. It will be no different if the magical non-concept of Universal Basic Income ever sees the light of day.

As for the notion that under UBI people will be free to become “care givers” to loved ones, I can foresee a whole lot of youngsters becoming “care givers” to their PlayStation instead.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer produced an analysis in 2021 that concluded that a national guaranteed basic income using parameters of Ontario’s 2017 pilot project could cut Canada’s poverty rate by half in just one year, but at a hefty cost of $91 billion in 2024–25 and $93 billion in 2025–26. That’s nearly double what Ottawa spends, for example, on health transfers to the provinces.

Blind Faith

Gradually Then Suddenly Great Moments In Socialism It's Probably Nothing 16 Comments

These days, South Africa is starting to look like a real-life enactment of the last few chapters of Atlas Shrugged.

Rampant cable theft has damaged South Africa’s railway signalling systems to the extent that train operators are effectively forced to operate “blindly”, necessitating frequent stops at railway transfer stations and manual phone-ins to avoid train collisions.

Pereira said a trip between Ermelo in Mpumalanga and Richards Bay in KwaZulu-Natal that typically lasted nine hours would now take over double that time.

That is because each stop can take about 20 minutes, provided the machinist has cellphone signal.

On the rare occasion that they are unable to communicate to the CTC due to no reception, the stop could add another two to three hours to the total trip time.

DEI in the Friendly Skies

It's Probably Nothing 20 Comments

View From The Wing- Boeing Whistleblower: Production Line Has “Enormous Volume Of Defects” Bolts On MAX 9 Weren’t Installed

The takeaway appears to be that outsourced plane components have so many problems when they show up at the production line that Boeing’s quality control staff can’t keep up with them all.

Update- United Airlines CEO: Boeing’s 737 Max-9 grounding is ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ for us

What the teachers strike is really about

Baiting The Left Books Gradually Then Suddenly Insufferable Twits youmightbeinsaskatchewan 40 Comments
This 2010 book foretold the problems teachers are striking over today.

This Saskatchewan teachers strike is about something no one wants to say openly.

Passing kids who should have failed, mainstreaming everyone, overcrowding and not enough ESL are all part of “classroom complexity.” But we’ve had ample warning this was going to happen, from a guy I’ve known for 30 years. He wrote a book about this in 2010.

Believe it or not, I used to write opinion columns for 28 years on everything under the sun before launching Pipeline Online. And this teachers strike in Saskatchewan got under my skin enough that I had to write about it.

 

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