Investing In A Pandemic World

Launching an investment column in the midst of the biggest economic meltdown in investment history is a peculiar thing to do, and yet, here we are. Actually, the timing may be excellent: given the parameters and objectives of this column – how not to invest, as much as how to invest – what better time to wade in? If you’re a seasoned investor, the past few months most likely have you huddled in the basement under the stairs, sucking your thumb and rocking back and forth. The market has been pounded, and justifiably so – the strategy of governments to contain COVID-19 involves essentially shutting down large sectors of the economy. One can easily surmise that industries like tourism, air travel, etc. will be in big trouble; the problem is determining how far the rot goes – if an airline fails, or many of them, what industries does it take down with it? In a highly interconnected world, the answers are not clear.

Rather than panic and throw in the towel though (as some investors appear to have done), it is wise to stop hyperventilating if you can and consider the landscape without the lens of panic. First, the pounding in the stock market simply erased the extraordinary gains made in the past several years. As of writing, the S&P 500 Index ETF (exchange traded fund, which invests in a basket of stocks that mirrors the S&P 500 companies on behalf of individuals) is now back at a level of two years ago. Today’s data point might look like a disaster relative to the value of the portfolio 4 months ago, but that paper gain to the end of 2019 was a bit suspect anyway and most expected a market correction of some kind. Not quite like this one of course, but of some kind.

Second, governments around the world now have an arsenal of tools with which to stabilize economies. Or, more like they have a variety of smaller tools and one really big one: a great big freaking printing press to crank out money and shovel into the economy’s engines. There are many arguments as to why this is a bad idea in the long run, and they may all be right, but over the past few decades these strategies have become the norm. Government-led monetary tinkering, on ever-larger scales, saved the financial world in the 2008-9 Great Recession by flooding the world with bank-stabilizing money, and that success convinced those central bankers that this tool has no practical limits. The world is now so interlinked and dependent on central bankers’ policies that shouting about how they will destroy the financial world eventually is like a dog barking at a car. We need to think and act as though these policies aren’t going away. Because they’re not.

Governments, in this consumption-based world, can see the perils of allowing huge swathes of the global economy to perish. We may sneer = at a consumer-based culture, but we wet our pants when we consider the alternative. We need to learn to do things as cleanly as possible, but nowhere in the world does anyone want to see tourism grind to a halt, or people stop buying automobiles, or cosmetics, or any other mainstay of our economy.

As a result, those central banks and governments won’t let it happen. They will pump in money, and they will ease restrictions as soon as possible to get things back to work. It is a challenging time to consider putting money in the stock market (if you’re lucky enough to have some, and a job to boot), but some great companies are on sale in a huge way now. We can see, for example, that anything to do with the food/medicine/distribution systems is of critical importance. Given the fact that governments will print money to shove at anything the general population can’t live without, it is safe to assume those sectors will pull through. Same as natural gas and other industrially-critical materials – the whole climate change narrative has been stuffed in a trunk for the time being. No one wants to face next winter with a natural gas industry that’s gone out of business.

There is of course risk that the markets would continue to fall, based on the fact that there is so much uncertainty in the world with respect to demand erosion and recovery timing. But if the big blue-chip companies that provide our industrial lifelines go defunct and irreparably damage your portfolio, well, we’ll all have much bigger problems to worry about.

For more stories, visit Todayville Calgary

Terry Etam

Terry Etam is a twenty-five-year veteran of Canada’s energy business. He has worked at a number of occupations spanning the finance, accounting, communications, and trading aspects of energy, and has written for several years on his own website Public Energy Number One and the widely-read industry site the BOE Report. In 2019, his first book, The End of Fossil Fuel Insanity, was published. Mr. Etam has been called an industry thought leader and the most influential voice in the oil patch. He lives in Calgary, Alberta.

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The big quiet bail out – Euro/Japan central banks propping up stock markets, is the US next?

Business / 6 years ago

Investing In A Pandemic World

Business

Some Of The Wackiest Things Featured In Rand Paul’s New Report Alleging $1,639,135,969,608 In Gov’t Waste

Published on December 24, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Ireland Owens

Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul released the latest edition of his annual “Festivus” report Tuesday detailing over $1 trillion in alleged wasteful spending in the U.S. government throughout 2025.

The newly released report found an estimated $1,639,135,969,608 total in government waste over the past year. Paul, a prominent fiscal hawk who serves as the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement that “no matter how much taxpayer money Washington burns through, politicians can’t help but demand more.”

“Fiscal responsibility may not be the most crowded road, but it’s one I’ve walked year after year — and this holiday season will be no different,” Paul continued. “So, before we get to the Feats of Strength, it’s time for my Airing of (Spending) Grievances.”

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The 2025 “Festivus” report highlighted a spate of instances of wasteful spending from the federal government, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spent $1.5 million on an “innovative multilevel strategy” to reduce drug use in “Latinx” communities through celebrity influencer campaigns, and also dished out $1.9 million on a “hybrid mobile phone family intervention” aiming to reduce childhood obesity among Latino families living in Los Angeles County.

The report also mentions that HHS spent more than $40 million on influencers to promote getting vaccinated against COVID-19 for racial and ethnic minority groups.

The State Department doled out $244,252 to Stand for Peace in Islamabad to produce a television cartoon series that teaches children in Pakistan how to combat climate change and also spent $1.5 million to promote American films, television shows and video games abroad, according to the report.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spent more than $1,079,360 teaching teenage ferrets to binge drink alcohol this year, according to Paul’s report.

The report found that the National Science Foundation (NSF) shelled out $497,200 on a “Video Game Challenge” for kids. The NSF and other federal agencies also paid $14,643,280 to make monkeys play a video game in the style of the “Price Is Right,” the report states.

Paul’s 2024 “Festivus” report similarly featured several instances of wasteful federal government spending, such as a Las Vegas pickleball complex and a cabaret show on ice.

The Trump administration has been attempting to uproot wasteful government spending and reduce the federal workforce this year. The administration’s cuts have shrunk the federal workforce to the smallest level in more than a decade, according to recent economic data.

Festivus is a humorous holiday observed annually on Dec. 23, dating back to a popular 1997 episode of the sitcom “Seinfeld.” Observance of the holiday notably includes an “airing of grievances,” per the “Seinfeld” episode of its origin.

Alberta

A Christmas wish list for health-care reform

Published on December 23, 2025

Todayville

From the Fraser Institute

By Nadeem Esmail and Mackenzie Moir

It’s an exciting time in Canadian health-care policy. But even the slew of new reforms in Alberta only go part of the way to using all the policy tools employed by high performing universal health-care systems.

For 2026, for the sake of Canadian patients, let’s hope Alberta stays the path on changes to how hospitals are paid and allowing some private purchases of health care, and that other provinces start to catch up.

While Alberta’s new reforms were welcome news this year, it’s clear Canada’s health-care system continued to struggle. Canadians were reminded by our annual comparison of health care systems that they pay for one of the developed world’s most expensive universal health-care systems, yet have some of the fewest physicians and hospital beds, while waiting in some of the longest queues.

And speaking of queues, wait times across Canada for non-emergency care reached the second-highest level ever measured at 28.6 weeks from general practitioner referral to actual treatment. That’s more than triple the wait of the early 1990s despite decades of government promises and spending commitments. Other work found that at least 23,746 patients died while waiting for care, and nearly 1.3 million Canadians left our overcrowded emergency rooms without being treated.

At least one province has shown a genuine willingness to do something about these problems.

The Smith government in Alberta announced early in the year that it would move towards paying hospitals per-patient treated as opposed to a fixed annual budget, a policy approach that Quebec has been working on for years. Albertans will also soon be able purchase, at least in a limited way, some diagnostic and surgical services for themselves, which is again already possible in Quebec. Alberta has also gone a step further by allowing physicians to work in both public and private settings.

While controversial in Canada, these approaches simply mirror what is being done in all of the developed world’s top-performing universal health-care systems. Australia, the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland all pay their hospitals per patient treated, and allow patients the opportunity to purchase care privately if they wish. They all also have better and faster universally accessible health care than Canada’s provinces provide, while spending a little more (Switzerland) or less (Australia, Germany, the Netherlands) than we do.

While these reforms are clearly a step in the right direction, there’s more to be done.

Even if we include Alberta’s reforms, these countries still do some very important things differently.

Critically, all of these countries expect patients to pay a small amount for their universally accessible services. The reasoning is straightforward: we all spend our own money more carefully than we spend someone else’s, and patients will make more informed decisions about when and where it’s best to access the health-care system when they have to pay a little out of pocket.

The evidence around this policy is clear—with appropriate safeguards to protect the very ill and exemptions for lower-income and other vulnerable populations, the demand for outpatient healthcare services falls, reducing delays and freeing up resources for others.

Charging patients even small amounts for care would of course violate the Canada Health Act, but it would also emulate the approach of 100 per cent of the developed world’s top-performing health-care systems. In this case, violating outdated federal policy means better universal health care for Canadians.

These top-performing countries also see the private sector and innovative entrepreneurs as partners in delivering universal health care. A relationship that is far different from the limited individual contracts some provinces have with private clinics and surgical centres to provide care in Canada. In these other countries, even full-service hospitals are operated by private providers. Importantly, partnering with innovative private providers, even hospitals, to deliver universal health care does not violate the Canada Health Act.

So, while Alberta has made strides this past year moving towards the well-established higher performance policy approach followed elsewhere, the Smith government remains at least a couple steps short of truly adopting a more Australian or European approach for health care. And other provinces have yet to even get to where Alberta will soon be.

Let’s hope in 2026 that Alberta keeps moving towards a truly world class universal health-care experience for patients, and that the other provinces catch up.