Economy
The wall of death for western economies
From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy
This is an easy fix – you just have to demand it
When I drove 20,000 miles through rural America a few years back, I was struck by the dilapidated nature of, well, just about everything. The towns were rundown, there were thousands of abandoned farms and ranches and family houses. Sidewalks broken, every other shop was abandoned. Fields ran untended, forests filled with brush and fire ladders, hangers-on in trailers with a junkyard dog and rifle racks on trucks. Hunting was a necessity, not a sport.
In sharp contrast I grew up in a country village of 500 surrounded by tidy productive prosperous farms, and we were a going concern with stone and brick buildings, and beautiful crafted family houses, lawns and weirs, a village pond with ducks, mature trees. Some estates, but not vulgar monstrosities like today. Everyone adult chipped in. It was vivid, active, close-connected, multi-generational and I never wanted to leave.
What the hell happened?
I didn’t fully understand until a hydrologist in Denver, retired from a career at the Department of Interior, told me at lunch in an Olive Garden, that in the mid-70’s, the blanket instructions coming down from DC switched from enabling business and development to preventing it. He, in his retirement, had a small ranch and on his wells, four meters from four different federal and state bureaucracies, indicating just how closely he was being surveilled. Over the years, regulations had come down so thick and punitive, near everyone operated in a catch-22 situation. You might hurdle one set of regs, only to discover that your success meant another set of regs cancelled you. It was so irrational it was fiendish, I thought to myself. Now of course, I see it as actually fiendish, the work of evil. The government was deliberately ruining peoples’ lives, drawing them down, impoverishing them, with malice.
The only prosperity to be seen was in the rather splendid buildings of the Army Corps of Engineers, and the palatial “farmhouses” owned by what I came to recognize as government farmers, the ones who had lobbied hard and got all the subsidies. Oh yes, and ethanol plants, one of the first green scams. They ate money.
Last week I was in the provincial capital near me, picking up something in Oak Bay Village, ultra-posh in a villagy Englishy way, half-timbered buildings, human-scaled, friendly. And found it to be in the same state, everything covered in a wash of grey, empty shops, abandoned stores, people shriveled and tired. I used to take my mother shopping there, and since she died, hadn’t had the heart to go back. Therefore I was disturbed, even shocked at the change. If the prettiest street in the prettiest city in Canada, visited by millions of tourists a year was dying….I’m sorry, Leading Indicator.
If the prettiest street in the prettiest city in Canada, visited by millions of tourists a year was dying….I’m sorry, Leading Indicator.
In fact, in Canada, even the food banks are running out of food. Bodies are piling up in mortuaries because people can’t afford to bury their dead. Chronically injured soldiers are offered Medically Assisted Dying in lieu of treatment. MAID has saved the “free” health system $90 million in end-of-life care, since it began. So we have to expect more of that.
A recent report showed the MAID drugs mean you drown to death, but are paralyzed so can’t communicate your distress. That means you can drown for 45 minutes before you actually die – autopsies have proved it. That is how careless our health bureaucracy is. I cannot watch another single mother weeping on TikTok because she cannot feed her children and is always sick. Another once athletic mountain climber sit in a wheelchair detailing her story of neurological pain so intense after vaccine, her husband had to sit with her so she wouldn’t kill herself. Every bureaucracy is killing us.
The U.S. still has the healthiest economy in the world. The thirteen other less rich countries are in per capita recession, which means GDP per person is shrinking: Canada, France, Germany, UK, Australia. Japan just registered a -2% growth rate, but it is already a zombie economy with families living paycheck to paycheck. Like addicts.
It may be that all I have is a hammer but, to me, this is due to impossible green mandates, the choking of energy supplies, the insane expense of green energy infrastructure which doesn’t produce and doesn’t “save money” and above all regulation that means that every job in a small cap public company labors under $50,000 of government ESG mandates. For every $1 you pay your average employee, you pay the government $1.50. That’s before taxes. Not that you have any income to tax. Government is literally eating us alive.
The U.S., according to Bloomberg, is facing a Wall of Death. Or Debt. Bloomberg says 42% of small public companies are losing money; not only that they face a $832 billion wall of debt, $600 billion of which comes due at much much higher interest rates in the next two years.
Let’s be really clear about where that debt came from. It came from people like our Fed Chair who asset stripped all these companies, loaded them with debt, mis-stated their value and sold them on. This is how Jerome Powell made his $50,000,000. He ruined a widget manufacturer. That debt is his dirty-but-not illegal play; his fortune, his I got mine and now I’m in “public service”. Suffer you peons, suffer more. And the dirty profoundly unethical play of all his associates. When Warren Buffet says he has $180 billion in cash because the market is over-valued, that is down to him and his pals loading up every small and medium manufacturer in the U.S. with debt, selling them on, whereupon another pirate buys the company, mis-states its value, borrows a bunch of money against it, raises the price, and sells it on. ALL small cap street profits in the fifteen years come from that criminal activity by our financial elites. Of course the market is over-valued. They over-valued it to steal from it.
The big companies only carry 50% of the debt of small caps. For small caps, the absolute heroes in this story, in the first quarter of 2024, their sales rose .3%, but inflation for that quarter was 1.1%. Bank of America says that small cap earnings will drop by one-third in the next year. Thanks to the miracle of Bidenomics, sales are dead other than the doom spending of hopeless millennials.
In contrast, big companies have gained 14% and big tech stocks earn 90% of all the gains. Where do you think the next play might be? That’s right, tech.
Median priced houses are now worth 7.8 times median income, twice the normal level, that ratio even above the housing bubble of 08. Housing prices are slated to rise 20% in the next year. One in five renters are either skipping meals or selling personal belongings to make rent. Rents will rise double digits in the coming year according to the New York Fed. Millennials have given up, reverting to a nihilistic hand-to-mouth existence.
According to economist Peter St. Onge, who aggregated many of the above states, the first twenty rungs of the ladder have been knocked out.
This is due entirely to the gutting of the heartland, the shipping of manufacturing to the CCP slave state, and the subsequent financialization of the economy. Value is now calculated on the future labor of people whose jobs are being killed off. They are financializing something that is dying. They know it, you know it, the government knows it.
The core reason for the invasion at the border is for immigrants they can pay dirt wages to keep the whole thing going for a few more years. Your kids, your future? Forget about it.
Of course the bankers have a solution. You know they do. It’s not a sensible, compassionate, creative and exciting solution whereby your life and mine is going to get much much better. It is a solution that means your kids and grandkids are going to live in a world wrought with poverty-driven crime, and dying cities and towns. But never mind! The market will make out like a bandit. The secret lies in the fact that 90% of all gains are currently being made by the digital aristocracy.
That will continue and this is how. To make up for destroying production, the government and markets will list you, your house, yard, cars, boats etc., as a federal asset. As well as national parks, conservation areas, wildlife areas, all ecological study zones, and so on. Then they will borrow against it. Everything you own, because of our federal debt, will be theirs.
The secret, obviously lies in the fact that currently 90% of all gains being made by the digital aristocracy,
It’s the only way. We are de-developing; correction, we are being forced to de-develop. We are de-industrializing, and our hard assets, our water, land and mineral resources are being sequestered from use. We cannot use anything to build anything. We won’t even own our houses, our gardens. We will have a senior partner in our financial lives who tells us what we may do and how much oxygen and water and power we may use. We are finished. We are future peasants.
The Play
Earlier this year, American Stewards, a few state governors and a handful of Congress people managed to stop the SEC from installing a rule allowing for the financialization of America’s national parks. But under the radar, because no media does any work whatsoever on this file, the Biden administration has reworked the proposal. Herewith is what is happening in the U.S.
The 2030 Agenda means that 30% of America’s lands have to be turned into a nature preserve by 2030. All those withdrawals from use hold incredible natural wealth and beauty never to be used or seen by Americans. The April 22, 2024, Fact Sheet notes some of the significant land and mineral withdrawals made to help reach 30×30. That wealth could be used by Americans to build cities and companies and full-on effulgent family and community lives. But it is to be locked away. How much is being locked away? The Biden administration estimates that land held privately, one-third of the U.S. to be worth $32 Trillion. So 2030 lands are worth $32 trillion.
So the idea is to lock away at least $32 trillion worth of resources. While people can’t make their rent. While single mothers weep and beg on socials. While people are electing to die because it is too expensive to live. While an entire generation has no hope and is descending into nihilism.
American Stewards reported the two significant Earth Day announcements released from the White House
“The Administration has already protected more than 41 million acres of lands and waters, and President Biden is on track to conserve more lands and waters than any President in history. This includes establishing five new national monuments and restoring protections for three more; creating four new national wildlife refuges and expanding five more; protecting the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, the nation’s most visited wilderness area; safeguarding Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska; and withdrawing Chaco Canyon in New Mexico and Thompson Divide in Colorado from further oil and gas leasing to protect thousands of sacred sites and pristine lands.”
Next, they unveiled a new website, conservation.gov that houses the American Conservation and Stewardship Atlas mapping tool. The Atlas was created to track the progress of 30×30 including the protected status of the lands as well as quantifying natural processes such as photosynthesis and pollination used to manufacture an arbitrary ecosystem service value.”
This is where the digital comes in. All those lands have to be surveilled. All those assets, including you and your house and your car, have to be surveilled. The money that will require installing these surveillance tools will be made by the digital titans, because that’s where the money is, now that lands, resources, labor have been destroyed.
As American Stewards reports: in January of 2023, the White House announced the “National Strategy to Develop Statistics for Environmental – Economic Statistics.” Since then, they have been working to establish a methodology to value the ecosystem services.
There are four accounts: Land, Water, Air Emissions and Economic Activity.
The Pilot Land Account measures the economic activity and total market value for all the land in the United States, 2.3 billion acres. They estimate that at around $100 trillion, which includes the 30% owned by humans.
In essence, the administration is conscripting private citizens’ land to secure the national debt, unbeknown to the American people and Congress. And using common land as well. Common land is owned by the people of the country, not the government and not the Nature Conservancy. It is yours. But, they are developing mechanisms to make it theirs. This is the first step.
The Pilot National Air Emissions Account “measures greenhouse gas emissions associated with specific industries on a national scale.” And you. Your CO2 emissions will be tracked and your allowance measured.
Ten years ago I sat in a rancher’s house deep in Wyoming and he told me that his land would be used as collateral for the National Debt that China holds. I felt dread in the pit of my stomach because I felt instinctively he was right. Subsequently, I don’t know how many people told me that was impossible, I was wrong, he was wrong, crazy.
No baby, we weren’t wrong. They are monetizing all public and private land to pay or support the national debt. And the way they are doing it, is by shutting down economic activity, across the board. We will be a resource to be played, monetized, surveilled and restricted for the profits of the market, and the destructive machinations of the bureaucracy.
And all the money to be made from it is digital. And that money, those resources they are stealing? They belong to us.
In my next article, I will describe in detail the players in this game, how the National Security State, Mossad, the PayPal Mafia, Drexel Burnam heirs, President Trump’s economic advisers, are working to destroy the hope of South and Central America. It is complex, fiendish and fascinating. This series starting today, points out that the Green takeover, mostly surreptitious, is driving the world’s economy into the dirt. It is based on falsified science, and convoluted financial ideas that fail repeatedly. Fix this, and we will be living in a Golden Age.
Elizabeth Nickson is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. Her studies and commentaries at the Frontier Centre can be accessed here. Follow her on Substack here. Her best-selling book Eco-Fascists can be purchased here.
Business
Ottawa’s emissions cap another headache for consumers and business
From Resource Works
Ottawa’s emissions cap for oil and gas aims to cut emissions but risks raising costs for consumers and disrupting industry stability.
Ottawa has brought down a new emissions cap for the oil and gas industry, with a mandate to reduce emissions by 35 percent from 2019 levels by 2030 to support the federal government’s climate targets. While the federal government is celebrating the cap as a big step towards a more sustainable future, it is going to make life harder for consumers and businesses alike.
This cap is coming in at a time when the oil sector is finally gaining greater stability due to the expanded Trans Mountain pipeline (TMX), and the mandate would undermine that progress and press greater costs upon households and industries that are already adjusting to high inflation and uncertainty in world markets.
Now that TMX is operational, Canada’s oil producers have grown their access to international markets, most importantly in Asia and the West Coast of the United States. Much-needed price stability now exists for Western Canadian Select (WCS), cutting the discount against the U.S. West Texas Intermediate benchmark, enabling Canadian oil to compete more effectively.
Newfound stability means that Canadian consumers and businesses have benefited from slightly lower prices, and that industry has grown less dependent on a more limited domestic demand. However, Ottawa’s emissions cap does threaten this new balance, and the sector now has to deal with compliance costs that could be passed down to consumers.
In order to meet the cap’s targets, Canadian oil producers must heavily invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, which is costly but essential. Major CCS projects include Shell’s Quest and the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, both of which are already operational.
The Pathways Alliance is a coalition of six major oil sands companies and is preparing to invest in one of the world’s largest networks for carbon storage. These efforts are crucial for reducing emissions, despite requiring vast amounts of capital.
Those in the industry are worrying that the emissions cap will push resources away from production and, instead, towards compliance, adding costs that will be borne by fuel prices and other consumer products.
Ottawa has portrayed the cap as an essential measure for meeting the federal government’s climate goals, with Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson labeling it “technically achievable.” Nonetheless, industry players argue that the timeline does not align with the practicalities of scaling CCS and other strategies aimed at decarbonizing.
Strathcona Resources executive chairman Adam Waterous pointed out the “stroke-of-the-pen” risk, in which shifting political landscapes imperil ongoing investments in carbon capture. Numerous oil producers feel that without certainty in carbon price stability, Ottawa’s cap will result in an unstable business environment that will push investment away from production.
Business leaders do not share the federal government’s optimism about the cap and see it as a one-sided approach that fails to reckon with market realities. The Pathways Alliance, which includes companies like Suncor Energy and Canadian Natural Resources, has been frustrated in its multiple attempts to get federal support to fund its $16.5-billion CCS project.
Rather than imposing these new limits, energy industry advocates argue that the government should provide targeted incentives like “carbon contracts for difference” (CCfDs), which help to stabilize carbon credit prices and reduce financial risk among investors. These measures would enable the energy sector to decarbonize without putting a greater burden on consumers.
The cap’s timing also raises concerns about the Canada-U.S. relationship. Canada has traditionally been a stable supplier of energy and helps to bolster U.S. energy security. However, as the U.S. increases its reliance on Canadian oil, the cap could disrupt this trade relationship. Lowered production levels would leave the economies of both the U.S. and Canada vulnerable, potentially disrupting energy prices and supply stability.
For households across Canada, the emissions cap could mean further financial strain. The higher costs of compliance passed to oil producers will mean higher prices at the pump and more expensive heating costs at a time when Canadian consumers are already struggling financially.
Businesses will also face increasing operating costs, which will be passed down to consumers via more expensive goods and services. Furthermore, higher costs and reduced production will erode Canada’s competitive advantage in the global energy market, slowing economic growth and risking job losses in the energy sector.
So, while Ottawa can laud its emissions cap as a necessary action on the climate, the implications for consumers and businesses are tremendous. Working with industry to find pragmatic, collaborative solutions is how Ottawa can avoid creating more financial burdens for Canadians.
Business
Claiming the Carbon Tax is Not Inflationary Defies Belief ā So Do Media Reports About Inflation
From EnergyNow.ca
By Jim Warren
Back in March 2019, the average price for a pound of lean ground beef at five major chain grocery outlets in Regina was $4.71. In September 2024 lean ground at the five big chain outlets averaged $7.90 — a 68% increase over the past five years… these price increases are a far cry from the official statistic for accumulated inflation of 21% over the same period.
Kudos to the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA). They have provided us with some valuable insight into the inflationary effects of Canada’s carbon tax.
This past August, the CTA published a brief to the federal government which among other things called for a moratorium on the carbon tax for diesel fuel.
In commenting on the brief, CTA president Stephen Laskowski said, “The carbon tax on diesel fuel is currently having zero impact on the environment and is only serving to needlessly drive up costs for every good purchased by Canadian families and businesses. The carbon tax needs to be repealed from diesel fuel until viable propulsion alternatives are available for the industry and the Canadian supply chain to choose from.”
The CTA estimates that as of 2024 the carbon tax on diesel adds an extra cost for long-haul truck operators of $15,000 to $20,000 or around 6% of per truck in annual operating costs. The brief to government claims a small trucking business with five trucks, “is seeing between $75,000 and $100,000 in extra costs due to the carbon tax.”
Obviously, truckers striving to remain solvent will be doing their utmost to pass carbon tax costs on to their customers. If the cost of the tax can’t be recouped by some trucking companies, we can bet there will be fewer of them operating over the coming years. As Laskowksi said, the carbon tax increased the cost of virtually every product transported by truck—which means pretty well every physical good consumers purchase.
In light of the political beating the Liberals have been taking over the carbon tax, the Trudeau government has taken a tiny feeble step toward relieving the pressure on businesses. In October 2024 federal finance minister Chrystia Freeland announced the government’s intention to provide carbon tax rebates to businesses with fewer than 500 employees. That means many of Canada’s trucking companies will be eligible to recoup some of the carbon tax they have been paying since fiscal 2019-2020. Freeland says the cheques will be in the mail this December.
It sounds okay until you look at the fine print.
The payments will not reflect the amount of fuel a business uses or how much carbon tax it has paid over the past five years. The rebates will be based on the number of people a company employs and will be paid only in provinces where the federal fuel charge applies. An accounting business with 10 employees will receive the same carbon tax rebate as a small trucking business with 10 employees. A CBC news report pulled the following example from Freeland’s press release, “A business in Ontario with 10 employees can expect to receive $4,010…”
Freeland boasted, “These are real, significant sums of money. They’re going to make a big difference to Canadian small business.”
Freeland’s statement is patently false when it comes to trucking companies.
Let’s say that the 10 employee business is a long-haul trucking company based in Ontario. After paying the carbon tax on five or more trucks for five years, the business would receive a paltry $4,010 rebate. That light dusting of sugar won’t make the carbon tax any more palatable to the trucking industry. According to the CTA’s estimates, if the 10 employee long-haul trucking firm had just five trucks the carbon tax will have cost it approximately $400,000 in operating costs over the past five years.
Carbon tax costs are not the only inflation related frustration affecting Canadians. The way the federal government and its friends in the media describe inflation presents people with a warped view of what is happening to the cost of living. Media reports on inflation rarely reflect the lived experience of people trying to pay the mortgage, feed their families and drive to work.
Governments, and their media apologists, in both Canada and the US have been taking victory laps over the past year because the rate of inflation has decreased. It’s as though people have nothing to worry about because the cost of living this year isn’t increasing as fast as it was last year. Changes in the inflation rate may be important for statistical purposes but they don’t reflect reality for people who have been coping with increases in inflation over several years. Most people measure the difficulties caused by inflation by comparing how much more things cost today than they did three to five years ago. The figure regular civilians, as opposed to statisticians, use to assess increases in the cost of living is accumulated inflation. However, we still need to be cautious about the accumulated inflation rate that we get when using government data.
If we calculate the rate of accumulated inflation based on official annualized inflation rates from 2019 up to the midpoint of 2024. The accumulated increase over that five year period is around 21%. And, it is true that this number better reflects people’s perception of inflation than a statistical comparison indicating the rate of inflation fell from 3.9 % in 2023 to 2.61% by the mid-point of 2024. The problem is the 21% number still does not accurately reflect increases in the cost of many necessary goods and services that are impacting households. This is why according to political polls voters in Canada and the US aren’t buying government propaganda when it comes to inflation.
The economy, and by extension, the high cost of living was a major issue in the recent US federal election campaign. The Democrats did not do themselves any favours claiming Bidenomics had wrestled inflation to the ground simply because it wasn’t increasing as fast as it was a year ago. A large number of voters in the US embraced former US president Lyndon Johnson’s maxim, “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
But wait, it gets worse. The basket of goods and services the Canadian government uses to calculate the cost of living index and the inflation rate fails to identify high increases in the prices for specific household essentials including many grocery staples. Similarly, official calculations for statistically weighted national average consumption of various products used to calculate the Consumer Price Index are skewed in favour of big urban centres. Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver are over represented. There is no way that the average annual consumption of gasoline for a household in downtown Montreal comes anywhere close to the amount used in most of Canada where public transit is scarce and distances are great. The result is the official accumulated inflation rate fails to show what many people are experiencing in most regions of the country.
Here is a good example of how published statistics don’t reflect the inflation shock that consumers experience at the grocery store. Back in March 2019, the average price for a pound of lean ground beef at five major chain grocery outlets in Regina was $4.71. In September 2024 lean ground at the five big chain outlets averaged $7.90 — a 68% increase over the past five years. The price of rib eye steak increased by even more. Rib eyes averaged $14.91 per pound at the five stores in Regina in March 2019. This September, the average price for rib eye steak was $29.40 – a 97% increase over five years. Obviously, these price increases are a far cry from the official statistic for accumulated inflation of 21% over the same period. (FYI: the data presented here was derived from Beef Business magazine published by the Saskatchewan Stock Growers Association. Each bimonthly edition of Beef Business features a retail beef price check)
Assuming we can find similar rates of accumulated inflation for other staples like dairy products and fresh vegetables it’s no wonder smart shoppers have been incensed over what’s going on with grocery prices and the cost of living (not to mention price increases for fuel, rents house prices and mortgage interest). Consumers have discovered today’s prices of $6.50 for a four litre jug of milk and $7.00 for a pound of butter aren’t going to be reduced simply because the rate of inflation has decreased form 3.69% to 2.61% over the past year. Using history as our guide, with the exception of rare periods of deflation such as the depression of the 1930s, it is unlikely we’ll see the price increases of the past few years come down other than for sales or loss leader strategies. And, while a 72 cent dollar might boost sales for some of our exports, it will add more than 25% to the cost of imported fruit and vegetables this winter,
Furthermore, the impacts of inflation are being more severely felt by Canadians today than they would have been a decade ago. This is because our per capita national income (using GDP as a proxy for national income) has been shrinking since 2014. That was the year oil prices fell into an eight year depression and the last full year before Justin Trudeau became Prime minister.
According to a 2024 Fraser Institute Bulletin authored by Alex Whelan, Milagros Placios and Lawrence Shembri, “Canadians have been getting poorer relative to residents of other countries in the OECD [a club of mostly rich countries]. From 2002 to 2014, Canadian income growth, as measured by GDP per capita, roughly kept pace with the rest of the OECD. From 2014 to 2022, however, Canada’s position declined sharply, ranking third lowest among 30 countries for average growth over the period.”
Canada’s per capita GDP/national income for 2024 is projected to be $54,866.05. According Whelan, Placios and Shembri, that is lower than per capita national income in the US, UK, New Zealand and Austrailia.
Only one US state, Mississippi, the poorest state in the union, has a per capita GDP/national income less than Canada’s. Mississippi’s total is $53,061. Other states considered poor by US standards such as Alabama and Arkansas have higher per capita GDPs than Canada. On average, Canadians have increasingly less money with which to buy more expensive goods and services.
The challenges Canadians have faced as a result of the high cost of living have coincided with the eight plus years that Justin Trudeau has been prime minister. The decline in per capita national income also occurred under Trudeau’s watch—in conjunction with Liberal policies designed to stifle growth in Canada’s petroleum and natural gas industries. What did the Trudeau Liberals think would happen to growth in per capita national income after they handcuffed our single most important export industry?
In the final analysis it’s a tossup. Do we have an inflation problem or is inflation just a symptom of our Trudeau problem?
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