Category:Economics
Paul Krugman and Keynesian theory got one thing right about hurricane Irma, but it’s not what you think
To paraphrase a Louis CK comedy bit, let’s assume you were a billionaire. You decide to buy all the pants in the world, and then just burn them. Does this have a positive impact on the economy?
Let’s assume you spent $1 billion to buy all the pants. This represents $1 billion of savings, or stated differently, $1 billion in goods and services produc… Read more
There’s no use arguing BitCoin versus gold
BitCoin and cryptocurrency forums have been reacting emotionally to arguments illustrating the flawed technical fundamentals of cryptocurrencies.
… Read moreJust google bitcoin+ponzi, bitcoin+intrinsic value, bitcoin+myspace, etc. All arguments have been made. Honeybadger doesn’t care. It moves onwards & upwards.
Anyone who’s longer
When non-tech savvy people talk about BitCoin, is it a sign of a bubble at its peak?
I believe nearly all asset classes are in over-leveraged, debt-fueled bubbles. I believe BitCoin and cryptocurrencies are no exception.
When my folks talk about moving money to BitCoin without much understanding of the technology and its goals such as decentralization and scarcity, I think a market peak has been reached.
The whole “keeping up … Read more
CBC: Canada added 54,000 jobs last month. Reality: Canada lost nearly 100,000 productive jobs and replaced it with useless jobs
CBC recently published an intentionally vague article over the latest StatsCan report to paint a rosy economic picture for Canada and its government.
What the article ignores is the quality of the jobs over the quantity of the jobs created, instead touting the jobs and employment numbers designed to obfuscate the real facts.
Here are some tidbits from the a… Read more
Canada’s Carbon Tax: Pay up or freeze to death
I am expecting fireplaces to gain in popularity as already financially pinched households attempt to keep warm in what has been a cold start to Winter for much of Canada. Ironically, fires release carbon dioxide too. How will the government collect its tax for that?
Meanwhile, Australia, with a more temperate climate than Canada, has already ditched it… Read more
Rising Hydro: Wynne and Trudeau tag team to put Ontario into poverty
Climate change, carbon taxes, green energy, rebates. For a province and country so rich in natural resources, such that it has a large surplus to export to the northern United States, its own citizens are getting ripped off badly for using their own natural resources. The current government, with its entire arsenal of buzzwords to justify raking its c… Read more
Black Friday as an economic indicator, mainly because only garbage is on sale
The iconic sight of long lines at 5 am, filled with desperate consumers looking for a deal marks Black Friday, the day immediately proceeding U.S. Thanksgiving. It is on this Black Friday, and every other Black Friday, where consumers get a hold of substantial discounts … on garbage stores are desperately trying to get rid of.
A lot of the electron… Read more
Canada’s phony housing-based GDP paints a bleak picture
What can you get for $500,000 today? You could buy one “cozy” shoe box condo in the sky in a gentrified neighbourhood in chilly Toronto, or two detached houses on huge lots beside a golf course in sunny Florida. The strange thing is that Americans think that their prices are reminiscent of 2008 and they think that they are back in a ho… Read more
Vancouver Passes Tax on Empty Homes, Canadian Annual Inflation Rate Reported at 1.5 percent
Despite the Canadian Press reading more like opinion pieces than objective news nowadays, these two articles are objective enough, and when taken at face value, paint a picture of the government supposedly doing their job.
Annual inflation rate 1.5 per cent in October, in line with expectations: http://www.thecanadianpress.com/english/online/O… Read more