No, we’re in an everything bubble It’s not just equities, but also real estate, and an inflationary bubble. Wait…how does inflation get lumped in there? Because all bubbles are created by the presence of two things (1) super easy financial conditions (e.g. ‘ample credit’) and (2) a good story.
Inflation is a story we tell ourselves that prices are going to be higher in the future, which will turn out to be true, as long as condition (1) is satisfied.
But, here’s the thing; there’s no telling when bubbles will burst so you kind of have to play along.
And … another thing; the Federal Reserve (and other central banks) have convinced themselves that being serial bubble blowers is both necessary and correct.
So, how to begin to make sense of all this? Tune in to find out.
Canada does not have the social safety net most americans think.
There is universal health care so people don’t get bankrupted for getting sick, but the general safety net isn’t sufficient to avoid living on the street.
Ontario welfare rate as an example is barely over $700 a month, you can’t rent a room for under $800 a month and a 1-bedroom apartment is $1500 to $3000 a month depending on area. The rate does not increase to compensate for inflation.
Subsidized housing has 10+ year wait lists, can’t count on that.
30+ years ago we did have a very robust safety net and much more reasonable living costs.
Thegun violence i think has more to do with use of psycho-active drugs, perhaps worse child rearing practices in the states (more parents spanking?), perhaps worse urban environments. Gun laws are more strict even though we have lots of firearms - has to be properly stored, locked away unloaded so kids can’t get to them.
Paul had mentioned that it takes 2.5 dollars to create one dollar of GDP.
For decades I have argued that the P in GDP stands for production. So if one accepts that this should be durable and non durable goods and those goods represent only about 30% of GDP the entire premise changes. If one considers that from 2022 to 2023 the debt increase was about 2.239 trillion and the increase of goods in that period was about 600 billion the ratio is about 4 dollars needed to increase production by one dollar. Years ago I remember reading that is was then 4.5 dollars.
I thought it interesting that the parabolic German/US market rise from mid-Oct to mid-Dec. mentioned by Chris in the beginning of the video was just after Israel/Hamas ~Oct 7 and that clearing network ‘glitch’ for 48 hours where 11 large Japanese banks couldn’t send or receive payments. I don’t know if these all connect, but its interesting they happened all around the same time.
So I got curious and pulled the data and ran the numbers for total credit market debt (again, TCMDO in the Fred series).
Here’s what we get (comparing Q1 results to Q1 across years…you get wildly different answers if you pull Q4 comparisons due to the timing of the Covid GDP smashing):
I’ve made the above-average outliers bold and red. Perhaps 2020 isn’t much of a surprise, but 2019 jumps right out.
It’s the highest in this 12-year series.
I don’t have a great explanation for that, but 2019 was a really dodgy year in the financial space with the repocalypse and all, and I’m hard-pressed to conjure up what all that borrowing was about. GDP wasn’t especially depressed in that year clocking in at 2.9%, so this isn’t a denominator artifact.
However, both 2021 and 2022 do suffer from denominator artifacts as GDP in those years was artificially boosted by the post-Covid rebound effect ('21) and absolutely massive goobermint deficit spending ('21 and '22).
In 2021 and 2022 combined, $11.4 trillion of new incremental debt was slathered on the already too-high pile of debt…this is starting to get away from the planners…but they do have contingency plans in the works in the form of The Great Taking legal machinery and an already developed and waiting to be deployed CBDC.
Yes, fascinating timing. We don’t know what exactly happened behind the scenes, but it’s 100% certain that “someone” freaked out and dumped a huge amount of ‘liquidity’ into the ““markets.””
Tracking the effects of that dumpage is like tracking elephants on a beach.
So I’m wondering where these billionaires are putting all this “cash” that they now have. Other companies stocks (at the top of the “bubble”?)?, Treasuries? BTC? PMs? Farmland? Under the mattress? How many megayachts does one need?
The cuts started happening in the mid 90s, federal government cut transfers to provinces to balance their budget (the balancing had to be done), provinces then cut.
What’s true is that 22 years ago even with the cuts, the safety net went a lot further - inflation ebbed it away.
We still don’t see as many mass shootings in canada as us.
Hi Chris: as I have some investments in LNG carriers, I looked up the evaporation loss/day for LNG cargo. I prooves to be rather 0.1 to 0.15 % % instead of 1%. Thought you’d like to know. See document link Economics of Gas Transportation by Pipeline and LNG | SpringerLink …
Both containment systems aim to minimize the evaporation of LNG (boil off gas, BOG). Typically, between 0.1 and 0.15% of the cargo evaporates per day during the voyage. Newer vessels are designed with lower BOG rates, with the best-in-class purporting rates as low as 0.08% (IGU 2018).
