The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP #157 (Other Notable Stories) - School Boards Sue Apps, Driving After a Stroke, BMO Blames It's Customers

Episode Date: April 3, 2024

FRIENDS AND ENEMIES Join us for some QUALITY Bitcoin and economics talk, with a Canadian focus, every Monday at 7 PM EST. This week: -Umbrel join the filter club-Coinbase legal troubles-Penny stock pump and dump-C YA SBF-Google wants your Bitcoin addresses-S21 Pro-Swift Digital Currency-印钞机走了BRRRRR-Canada’s productivity concerns -Renting your way to a better credit score And much more From a couple of Canucks who like to talk about how Bitcoin will impact Canada. As always, none of the info is financial advice. Website: ⁠www.CanadianBitcoiners.com⁠Discord: ⁠https://discord.gg/ESRCZWpb A part of the CBP Media Network: ⁠www.twitter.com/CBPMediaNetwork This show is sponsored by: easyDNS - ⁠⁠https://easydns.com/⁠⁠EasyDNS is the best spot for Anycast DNS, domain name registrations, web and email services. They are fast, reliable and privacy focused. You can even pay for your services with Bitcoin! Apply coupon code 'CBPMEDIA' for 50% off initial purchase Bull Bitcoin - ⁠⁠https://mission.bullbitcoin.com/cbp⁠⁠The CBP recommends Bull Bitcoin for all your BTC needs. With their new kyc-free options, there's never been a quicker, simpler, more private and (most importantly) cheaper way to acquire private Bitcoin. Use the link above for $20 bones and take advantage of all Bull Bitcoin has to offer.

The Canadian Bitcoiners podcast is just two guys and maybe a guest or two discussing Bitcoin, Bitcoin equities, and the related macroeconomic space. It's not meant to be financial advice, so please, if you're doing any investing, after listening to our program, do your own research, do your own due diligence, and understand that any money you invest can be lost. The show is meant for entertainment purposes only, looks like, with the CBDC. And it's something that is going to be rolled out, they're saying, within the next one to two years. And Reuters is reporting on this, that they've recently concluded a six-month trial.

And this trial involved 38 different members and their central banks. The countries that were involved were Germany, France, Australia, Singapore, Czech Germany, France, Australia, Singapore, Czech Republic, Thailand, and a bunch of others that want to be unnamed, which is interesting.

But Singapore, the Singapore dollar, are they going to make that into a CBDC one? They hopefully not, because it's one of our, it's a fan favorite of the show. So with this, they're saying that this is going to be,

or this has been one of the largest collaborations, global collaborations on CBDCs. And also, this is the largest collaboration for tokenization of assets to date. And some of the big banks that were involved were HSBC, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, and a bunch of others. So it's not just simply the central banks in their countries that were involved. Also, they had a lot of these big banks, massive banks that were involved in this trial as well. So the goal they're going to be moving forward is to determine how they could handle highly complex trades to help automate them,

speed up and reduce the cost of settlements. And this wouldn't be unprecedented, right? Because if you're talking about a CBDC, the Bahamas, Nigeria, and China already have in some way, shape, or form a CBDC that they have rolled out. And also the European Central Bank, they have hinted that they're working on a digital currency. So there's a lot of talk behind the scenes, and there are already countries that have moved ahead with stuff. So the real hurdle to see if this is going to be successful is with the multiple central banks that are being involved, can they deal with different underlying technologies with CBDCs? That's the thing that they're gonna have to look at. But if you have one common protocol, and all these other central banks could connect to this protocol through an API or something like that, well, then potentially, you could have even different CBc systems connect to it and work from there

very technical i i would imagine that i have zero ability to even figure this out but there are people that are much smarter than me looking at this but this is not a retail cbdc this is on a wholesale cbdc so they're doing this right now and i know you're very you know you know what i'm going to say tell me what i'm going to say to you when I get my chance to speak. Go ahead. Well, you've been talking about a CBDC that's going to be rolled out for some time. And you think you and I were on the same side of the fence, but we have different opinions on when this is going to be rolled out. I think a retail CBDC is a long time away. I think you believe it's much closer than what I think it is.

And so looking at this, does this feed your opinion that feed into your opinion? Yeah, that's probably going to come sooner rather than later. What do you think? I think so. I mean, my only question for you is going to be, does this change your opinion on the time horizon? Because I look at it and I just think it's like it's almost here. It's closer than everyone realizes. Yeah, it's still very far away.

Again, a retail CBDC, something that you and I can transact with, I think is very far away. Something on a wholesale, this has always been the hurdle. So it's going to be first done this, and then you can move on to something a little bit less, and then eventually it will be retail. And we're still – it's not going to be two, three, or five years away. It's probably going to be a decade or longer in my opinion. Do you think a decade? A decade. For the U.S.?

Absolutely. I think other central banks could do it sooner and i'm talking about the u.s i think the u.s is probably the last central bank that is going to go ahead with a cbdc i think that others the european central bank the bank of england the bank of canada a whole bunch of others will probably go first why not i think they could be the algorithm ghetto is calling you buddy it's coming faster than you think. And in the chat, people are saying the same thing. Listen, the question I think me and you haven't really dove deep on, and maybe we can in the summertime when we have a gap in a week, what exactly is a CBDC?

How does it work? What does it look like? And maybe most importantly, how far is it from what we're using today? That's a question that remains, I think, a little bit gray, not just for us, but for a lot of people. CBDC is this term that's thrown around a lot because it's clickbaity and it's sexy on Twitter, but broadly, it's hard to define what these things are. Everyone kind of agrees that it's a thing. I can.

Can you? Okay, go. Proof of authority, there's one central entity, maybe a few other backups regionally that's what it is so if it's a programmable uh currency that uses proof of authority that's it and it's associated with a central bank it can't be some true shit coin that has absolutely no associated with the country association That's my definition of it. I still think we're closer than a lot of people realize, honestly. I just think if the best case that can be made for a CBDC being further away than closer is that there's not the technical wherewithal and competence in governments to roll

this thing out without problems. I just don't think that's enough. I don't think that's a good enough case to say that it's far away. Because governments, as we know, will outsource to competent groups or something like this and definitely have competent people at some of the highest levels doing things that are actually important as opposed to stuff like, I don't know, you know, running the White House Twitter account or whatever goes on over there. But like generally the stuff that matters gets competent eyes and hands and ears. And this is important. And, you know, the other thing too that I think people are forgetting is there's a clear shift starting toward balkanization and unrest broadly in the United States.

And I don't think that the States is going to be the last federal government to roll one out. I think it'll be among the first, quite honestly. The question of use and adoption is a different story, but the option will be there in the States, I think, among the first available. Not among the last. They'll be near the front of the line.

So will we. I think we'll be near the front of the line, too. We're on the opposite end of the spectrum here. I just have the opinion it's going to be. And I don't want to see, I'm not talking about just like a pilot project or some regional just where a few people i'm talking like a full-fledged full rolled out cbdc that's why that's what i'm talking about 10 years away just like we had a pilot project for ubi in ontario and three select

cities okay so yeah ubi exists i mean not not to yeah not to like drag this topic on but like i think we're we're really working around the edges like a full what is what is it what do you mean by full rollout like people either use it or they don't use it like bitcoin is a full rollout now but not everyone uses it so you know is is bitcoin out there you know is that a that's that's what i'm trying to say like i think that there's a when they give people the option to use it yeah and they could choose one or the other or they're forced to use it rather than choosing one of the i think choosing one yeah the option and if you live outside of iowa you're not going to be able to use it because we like in canada everyone can use it except quebec it's like always a story everyone gets it except quebec so in that case i would say

it's fully much rolled out because yeah but on the flip side if they say just pei can use it i mean yeah it's rolled out but really lagarde gives these stupid fucking speeches i can't i can never tell when they're from because she's look like she's a thousand years old for five years although she's got a nice tan though she's always like tanned she she i don't know how she does it though she she do she do be enjoying the UV rays does that turn you orange? does she have an orange skin? she looks kind of orange

I would like to see Trump talk about how orange she is actually but I don't think he will I think I would like to see him do that if she ever took a shot at him I have a secret opinion that the reason she doesn't talk about Trump is because she's also orange but anyway I think that I think that

when she talks, and she's not the only one, right? There's other central bank authorities and WEF types who are like, yeah, CBDC, we're not going to eliminate cash. You're going to have the option, Pleb, whether you want to use cash CBDCs. And I just think that the option is going to be, you know, it was like the same option you had in 2021 and 2022 here when it came to, you know, certain medical interventions. Like, yeah, you can do whatever you want, whatever you want. It's just going to be a different life for you if you don't do the thing that we really want you to do. And, you know, but the option is there. I think that's where you're going to land on CBDCs, honestly. That's where I're going to land on CBDCs, honestly. Yeah, I know. We got it

in our bet book here. We'll bet that on the fourth year anniversary. I'm saying it's going to be in our 13th year anniversary or after that. So if we get 13 years and we're not there yet, then yeah, we'll see who's won. Anyways, China. I can't believe this is being done because

they're going to take you back to the past, right? They're going to play the shitty bond buying games that fucking suck ass. They're going to... This is a story from South China Morning Post. I'm not sure if you saw this one. And also, I kind of missed the Inner Mongolia evening reports

that we used to do, but... The mining updates. Yeah, we got to talk more about Inner Mongolia. China is desperate, or they are desperately in a need for an infusion of cash to enter the markets so liquidity is what they're dying for right now so what's the gameplay they're going to use well the tried tested and true central bank bond buying play right this thing works all the fucking time so they're gonna dust off this playbook right and this in china at least hasn't been used in approximately two decades so for their credit

in their credit they haven't been doing this like others have but it looks like this move was announced at the central finance work work conference this was done back in October of last year. Some time has passed since then. And people have noted that the Chinese central bank has yet to start the bond buying program, which seems odd because they announced it last year in October, day before Halloween, and still to date we're April, and they haven't yet done it.

But anyways, the CCP goal is to grow China's economy by 5% in 2024. And they think that this is one way that's going to help them get there. Gone are the days of double digit growth. Remember, they used to have that all the time. Now it seems like it's just not the longer. It was the model, right? It was the model.

Yeah. And here they are. They're like, just they're mortal. Right. And now they're going to be buying bonds. What a fucking shitty move that's going to be in the long run maybe it will help out temporarily in a short time but i don't know but again they have their currency pegged to the u.s dollar so that's going to cause some tension somewhere i'm not sure exactly how this is going to play out this is well beyond my pay grade but

either way china buying bonds this is gonna be fun to watch they couldn't make the shift to demand economy right like that was the big thing they had a problem with. They grew this thing out with the hope that it would go from a government subsidized kind of growth program and these ghost buildings would fill themselves up with people who are willing to spend money in the Chinese economy and they just couldn't do it. And now, I don't know, what's the play? The other thing people don't talk about in terms of growth, it wasn't just double-digit GDP growth they were seeing. It was population growth that was very high too.

And now that's fallen off as well. It's a problem you see in all kinds of modern, I was going to say modern democracies. Let's say it's a problem you see more and more in the first world, that fertility rates are way down. And it's because people are accustomed to a certain style of living, a certain standard of life. Your weekend looks a certain way. Your weeknights and mornings look a certain way. You enjoy that style. And so you don't want to leave it. And that's one reason. The other reason, obviously, Len, and we've talked about this many times on CBP, is that it's too

expensive to have a kid for a lot of people. And so people don't have their children until very late or they don't have any at all. And as a result, you have less kids. And so both those metrics now have changed. It's funny. I'll tell a story here. When I was in university, one of the courses I took, I was a poli-sci major at Brock.

And people always say, oh, you walk and talk, go to Brock. But I did a strong poli-sci program. A lot of professors there did a lot of cool stuff during their careers and continue to do cool stuff. Actually, I still visit the poli sci faculty page once in a while and see what people are up to. One of the classes I had was this class, Rise of China. It was given by this guy, Charles Burton,

who's been a China stan for a long time. Actually, he was married to a professor also in the faculty, whose name escapes me now, went to China on assignment and came back with another wife. So, you know, they were, he really liked China, I guess, in a lot of ways. And so he, he used to say that, you know, as much as he liked the Chinese model and the Chinese kind of mixed democracy, he used to call it, the thing that he couldn't figure out was how they were going to sustain the growth. And people at the time, especially in the econ department, like I had this, oh God, I can't remember his name. He was a young fellow talking about how the China model was the thing everyone should be looking at.

It was like the way to build the third world into the first world. And it was exactly this, you know, lower taxes, increase foreign investment vis-a-vis tax regimens and tax incentives and whatnot. And, you know, just watch the flywheel go. And now look, you know, like it's just this model that was revered, I think in a lot lot of places completely vanished. And it was as recently as 2021, 2022, when a lot of the macro, global macro guys were saying, man, just wait till China comes back online. Oil's going to 150. Global demand's going to skyrocket. We're going to

get back to... It never came back online. It it never came back online it never came back at the rate it was uh clipping away at before and so now you got a lot of systems that are reliant on china and you mentioned the u.s dollar peg dude how about like iphone production or like like you know they're doing that in india right now right i mean so some of it they've moved a bunch of stuff to india yeah and uh i think that you know Apple's in a bit of a kerfuffle now with China and their government. And there's just a lot of stuff that relies on the Chinese machine. And if the machine sputters, it's going to have ripple effects, right? There's a lot of stuff that's going to change or be affected by that. So something to keep an eye on.

Now, here's a question for you. If this does continue to go south for them, does that increase or decrease the likelihood there's an invasion of Taiwan? That's one thing I don't really have an answer for. But I know this is something that was very popular to discuss on Twitter spaces and other forums and venues eight, nine months ago. And now it seems like no one's talking about it. but is this is this a sign of you know a unifying uh war between china and taiwan or is it a sign that this is going to disappear from uh from vision pretty soon see i never put much thought into it so on the surface i'm going to say that they're not going to do anything with taiwan as long as there's any perceived threat that there's going to be retaliation from the u.s

so it depends on who's going to be in power, United States. So some may say Biden is probably less likely to retaliate compared to somebody like Trump. So depending on who wins the election, maybe they might want to consider doing it if Biden wins the next election. But then again, even with Biden there, I still think there's going to be some sort of retaliation. So it really depends on how weak the U.S. is globally. But as they continually get weaker year over year, they're less likely to start defending their allies. They're defending heavily right now Ukraine, Israel. Well, weaker means a lot of stuff, right?

Weaker is including the debt service number approaching a trillion plus. I'm pretty sure this year it's expected to get there. Social Security, wavering, sputtering, all this stuff. That could change too. Once they start lowering rates and then as new bonds get issued, so you probably have a period of time where it's going to be over a trillion, but then it's going to come back down. But it's only going to come back down temporarily.

Even on low rate environment, you're still going to have over a trillion dollars servicing annually for even because just because of the sheer debt that they have right now 30 34 trillion going to be 35 soon it's a fucking joke but we're all saying he's recommending a youtube channel called the china show is this the best education for westerners about china so check that out that sounds like sounds like something the chinese government would say i'll have to i'll look at it with a careful eye well let's move on to notable north joey because i got a few stories i want to bring up with uh sure this one because there's a story out of bc about a person who suffered a stroke and couldn't get an ambulance i'm not sure if you saw this of

course i saw it it's incredible it's absolutely insane it's a ctf news story and some guy was near richmond bc and he was going to go pick up his parents at the airport so his parents were flying in from somewhere it doesn't say where but anyways as he was driving to the airport to get his parents unfortunately he suffered a stroke and even with that he was still able to somehow pull the car over to the safety of the side of the road, even though he was starting to lose the use of his limbs. And somehow he was able to call 911 and call for an ambulance to come get him because he was there stuck on the side of the road, unable to do anything, suffering a stroke.

It's a bad situation to be in. So Buddy waited a long time for an ambulance. In fact, so long that they actually called him back an hour later, the 911 people did, and they advised him there's going to be no ambulance coming, and they advised him to drive himself to the hospital. Insane. And through the whole ordeal, he managed to get to the hospital somehow, but the article didn't exactly say how, but anyways.

Upon arrival at the hospital, too too he then waited and waited and waited and didn't get medication for over 24 hours after initially suffering a stroke which from what i understand could be really problematic if they get medication right away you have to treat it and then hopefully you'll be able to recover but this guy he got the worst of all ends he wasn't unable to get an ambulance they told him to drive himself to the hospital. Then he got to the hospital somehow and he had to wait for hours on end and still somehow he made it.

Can you imagine being that? I hope neither of us are in that situation. Could you imagine that happening to you? I would lose my fucking mind. You know what? I don't even think you'd be losing your mind because you're probably disoriented. You're confused. you know what i don't even think you'd be losing your mind because you're probably you're probably

disoriented you're confused no but like after after len like i wouldn't be going to the news and i'd be like out in front of the hospital with a fucking megaphone like this is insane it's insane this guy there there are ways to say this that are you you know, a little more genteel than what I'm about to say, but like, how, how is it fair that this guy pays into the system for his whole life or like, you know, his whole adult life. And when he has a problem, finally he gets a call that says there's no ambulance coming. Fucking crazy. Fucking crazy. When politicians say that it's unfair to call the Canadian system broken, this is what Canadians are talking about. Broken isn't a strong enough word for what happened to this guy.

It's not a strong enough word for parents and their babies have to wait in the emergency room with high fevers for six hours. It's not a strong enough word for people who go to the hospital to get treatment for a significant injury and get misdiagnosed and sent home. It's not a strong enough word for any of these things. And what can we do about this that will have a positive effect in the short or medium term? Maybe the most frustrating thing and maybe the most frustrating answer, the answer is nothing. There's nothing we can do. There's too many people.

There's not enough doctors. There's not enough supports. And the answer, Len, is going to wind up being we need to pay more tax and the services are going to get worse and more expensive like every other fucking time we do this and uh i don't know what the fix is man especially in some of these like more difficult to reach communities like i think about if you were going up north or uh if you're at the cottage or something you know how how do you how do you tell people that like sorry i know you've been paying into the system forever. Sorry. I know you've been a good, you know, contributor to the CPP or whatever. Sorry, sorry, sorry. But we just don't have the resources for you. So hopefully you don't die, uh, either of the

stroke or on your way to the hospital driving with one arm and your body slumped over to one side, but, uh, we can't do anything for you. Like, what were they, what were they hoping, honestly, that the guy just wouldn't get there and they wouldn't have to worry about it and then he shows up and they're like oh fuck he made it well we still don't have anything for him i guess let's just sit him in the waiting room could you imagine showing up in the waiting room right they show up at the waiting room you got a broken ankle or something you're playing basketball you broke your ankle you show up in the waiting room there's a guy having a fucking stroke in the waiting room how long you you been waiting, buddy?

Oh, I don't know, four hours. Could you fucking imagine? It's like a fucking SNL skit. It's completely insane. We should be ashamed. People from that hospital should be fired. There should be a review of the books. It should be like a napalm, the entire institution situation,

and just salt it and start again. But it's not going to be any of that. There's not going to be any repercussions. There's not going to be any consequences. It's going to be nothing. We're just going to carry on like nothing happened. Yeah, and it's going to cost people more money to try to rectify it because if you look at – I can speak about the province of Ontario.

I can't speak about other provinces. From what I understand, in Ontario, the two biggest line items on the Ontario budget are education and healthcare. And that takes up... Are we going to talk about the fucking TikTok thing today? The teachers suing TikTok? We can if you want.

I think we should. You want to talk about it right now? Because then she's brought it up. It's just Ontario schools. They're going through the process. it's it's a select school boards one in on ottawa i believe and two in toronto they're going to be moving ahead with going up against tiktok meta and snapchat because they're suing all three of them to the tune of 4.5 billion dollars so those school boards are doing this because they claim that they're disrupting

student learning and also the education system. Good luck. I don't know how they came up with this $4.5 billion. And even if they win, what are they going to be doing with that? Because the kids they're, you know, they're already being disrupted, just not just because of that, but because of a whole bunch of other things to society is also making them be disrupted as well but i don't know i'm not sure what you want to add to this but there you go that's i laid up the carpet here as much as i can for you well i'll start with a question you have a young daughter uh do you consider your young daughter to be placed into a bad situation in terms of education by her cell phone use no she doesn't have a cell phone too of course she doesn't have a fucking cell phone len she's a kid and whose decision

was it not to give her a cell phone well obviously the parents it was your decision okay you and your wife made that decision now let's just shift this a little bit okay to the to the school setting i had this uh disagreement with uh milan i can't remember his last name but he's he he's a guy i actually like him he's a middle school teacher it sounds like on twitter no no no it wasn't it wasn't it's former nhl former middle league nhl talent no it wasn't him uh you know and i i put out this tweet that like the the school boards and the unions continue to go down this road where they just delivered the shittiest piss poor results on any measurable metric that exists today. And they blame everybody but themselves.

Right. They blame everyone else. It's always something else. It's, you know, right wing extremism. It's homophobia. It's racism. It's what it's not, guys. It's that you fucking suck at your fucking jobs. It's that all of you are fucking losers. You all took teaching on as

a profession as a fucking plan B. And it shows. You want to be revered everywhere from the liquor store line to the cocktail parties to the church, but none of you take the fucking job seriously enough. Joey, how do you know this? Let me fucking tell you. If you were serious about making sure that phones didn't disrupt learning, what would you do? You'd ban the fucking phones from the classroom. You'd ban them. No more fucking phone. Put it in a Faraday bag at the door. Leave it in your locker. Leave it in your backpack. You get 10 minutes for your phone in the morning, 10 minutes for your phone in the afternoon. That's it. There's always a better way to solve things that these guys refuse to do. Why? Because they don't

want to engage with parents. They don't want to engage with teachers. And Lynn, I hate to say it, but it sounds to me like these people who are professionals demanding to be paid six figures can't engage with fucking children either. They can't do it. They're unwilling to have these difficult conversations and deal with difficult classrooms, kids, teachers, parents, whatever. It's just these people are not serious. They're not serious. And so I will repeat something I've said on the show before. When you ask yourself, who's going to pay my CPP in 15 or 20 years, how can you as a rational person think that any of these kids taught by any of these teachers have a fucking hope in hell of paying CPP for a country of 50 fucking million people in 15 years? Do you really think that that's possible? You can't. You can't. No one with a

sound mind thinks that's possible. These teachers unions are a plague on society. They are a plague on kids. They are the worst thing for education. And they are trying to get away from every shred of accountability left to evaluate their performance. Instead, they bloat the curriculum with nonsense that has no effect on the productive capacity of these kids going forward. Why? Because it's easier. It's low-hanging fruit. That's what they want. I'm not willing to entertain any other argument at this point. What else can you say? You refuse to take phones out of classrooms. Instead, you sue the fucking companies.

You guys are, it's so stupid, Len. It is so fucking stupid. I want to give you a chance to answer a couple of questions. Since you're a parent and I'm not a parent, if your school told you in a newsletter or whatever, that from now on, phones are going to be faraday bagged when kids arrive in the morning and if you need to get a hold of your son or daughter you should call the school and you'll be able to speak to them through the office you know in the office

setting or whatever would that bother you as a parent no it's just like the old days so that's how it was done when i was of course not and if you're if your son or daughter was using a phone and in a setting that faraday bags were not. And if your son or daughter was using a phone in a setting that Faraday bags were not being used or whatever, and the teacher sent home a note saying, I had to take your kid's phone. It's going to be in my desk for the rest of the week. If you need it, I'll give it to you, but please make sure that the child doesn't bring the phone to the classroom anymore. Would that upset you? No. Is that a reasonable thing to ask a fucking professional who gets paid six figures

and wants to be revered at liquor store lines and cocktail parties for their calling to education is that too much for that person to be asked to do you think is it that's well within their duties it's fucking not and yet they refuse to fucking do it these school boards devil's advocate now if they're not told to do it why should they do it so somebody let's be honest of course they're not told to do it of course they're not told to do it because the school boards don't want to engage with parents they don't want to have any difficult conversations they don't want to have any fucking fights it's it's stupid these people are not serious they're fucking kids they're they're immature they're

immature job the teachers're doing a job. The teachers are doing a job. And, you know, it's not a calling. It's a job. Right. And so they're going to do hopefully what they're instructed to do. The school board, their administrator, their superintendent, whoever tells them this is what this is the thing you got to do. And you got to do that.

Right. They're just lemmings. Right. In a way. This is exactly why. They can take a little bit outside the box, but this should be directed from above more than anything. This is exactly why I didn't follow through

in a career, my teaching career. I just, I can't do it. I cannot be around these people. They're not serious. They pretend they're, you know, on a mission from God working in the classroom. They will have you believe they have the... And I'm not talking about every teacher, okay?

Like I said to Milan, I'm not talking about every teacher. There are really competent, really high quality teachers, but they're so diluted now, both by the piss poor quality of their colleagues and the piss poor quality of the curriculum that no matter how hard they try, they're just not going to be able to deliver a good product. Period. End of story. And the school board should be ashamed of themselves. Again, second time in notable North here, like napalm and salt the earth and start again with all this

stuff. Just get rid of all these fucking people now before it's too late. Because in 15 years, when these 10-year-olds are trying to get jobs, okay? Again, what is the plan to have them pay into the CPP? What is the plan? What is the plan to have them pay into healthcare or fund roads? Whatever, right? There's no way if you can't even get these kids off their phones when they're fucking 10 what is the plan to have them contribute to the tax base to keep the country running in 15 years ubi baby ubi fucking whatever what's that right let's go on

we'll talk about another ctv story it was a woman in ottawa she is 75 years old. And she's been a customer of BMO for a long time, because this story goes back to September 2022, where she received a call from somebody claiming to be on behalf of Amazon Prime. And they were telling her that she needs to update her payment method. And she never used Amazon Prime before. So she became suspicious that she did the right thing. She actually turned off her computer, went to the bank and tell them what happened that she did very proactive here and the bank what they did they issued her a new debit card and credit card new pins the whole nine yard and she was

reassured that her money was not at risk until sometime later she realized that someone gained access to her account stealing eleven thousand dollars from her savings and also four thousand dollars from her credit card and the money they tracked it it went overseas using bmo's global money transfer she went back to the bank asked why this wasn't flagged initially the blank the bank then launched an investigation and a final decision was reached what was it well she's not to receive any compensation because the bank found she did not adequately protect her account information. This is a good story about Bitcoin. So exactly how the scammers gained access to her account has not been conclusively explained.

But the bank said there's no way that the fraudulent transaction could have happened without her bank card number, password, and the one-time pass codes. She went to the ombudsman for banking services complained and according to the ombudsman in 2023 alone there were 2700 banking consumer banking complaints of various types more than half come from bmo so they're and in 2022 so basically in 2023 they had 1400 ish or so complaints in 2022 they only had 331 complaints that's a huge spike from bmo just one year so this is another example why you bitcoin you control your keys you control your passphrase if you have one you're going to control your bitcoin you're not relying on some centralized authority that if you get rugged and you ask them to be made whole

they have the final say and if indeed that you are going to be made whole, they have the final say. And if indeed that you are going to be being hold or not. So feel sorry for this lady. She ended up moving all her business after decades of being with BMO to another bank, because she is so pissed off with them. I can understand why she's out 15 grand and they're not going to make her whole. Like this is shitty service,

but there you go. A story from CTV news, just more and more fuel for the fire. Why we Bitcoin. Isn't it funny that people who don't like Bitcoin are like, well, what happens if someone steals your Bitcoin? You can't call anyone. You just lose it.

You're not going to get it back. Guess what? Boy, do I have a story for you. You can't get your money back from the bank either. Even after you warn them that something happened, they still won't give you your money back. They still let you get scammed. I think it's hilarious, man. I don't know. Poor woman. But yeah, a story as old as time at this point. It's going to get worse and worse, man. Banks are not exempt from the crisis of

competence that we are seeing everywhere. And you're going to see it more and more in that sector because it's like a trusted sort of black box, right? You just assume that the money's in the bank and it's good. And if you get scammed or you get hacked, they got your back. But it turns out that they don't have your back and the black box shouldn't be trusted after all. So be aware, be aware, take your money out. But in a shoebox, the interest rate's pretty low on your savings account. You're better off putting it under your your bed no one-time passwords under there bank of canada the deputy governor carolyn rogers was talking publicly about canada's productivity and low business investment you wrote about this yeah so you're very familiar with this i'll just

lay it out for you she even used the word saying i'm saying that this it's an emergency and it's time to break the glass this is straight from the deputy governor's mouth she also says what really sticks out is how much we lag on investment in machine machinery equipment and other important intellectual property she's citing info from stats can which shows that labor productivity in canada's canadian businesses rose a mere 0.4 percent in q4 2023 this on the surface doesn't say a whole lot but coupled with the fact that numbers fell for six straight quarters before that well the annual productivity declined 1.8 percent in 2023 that is the third consecutive year of decline this is the measure of how much the

economy produced against how many hours are being worked. Because it's funny, there's a lot of people out there, they're pointing to GDP as a finger figure that things are trending in the right direction. But that is simply just one metric. Another one, maybe equally as important, I'm not sure, but is GDP per capita, which has been for a few years now falling behind the United States. And the Bank of Canada says that the lack of production is making it more difficult for them to tackle the rising costs. And they're saying they're asking that businesses try, if they can, to invest more capital to help turn this thing around they're saying back in 1984 the canadian economy was producing 88 of the value generated by the u.s economy per hour but by 2022 this has fallen to 71 that's 17 drop from 84 that's two years ago two years ago by the way so what is it now she

doesn't she doesn't mention it but it's got to be lower now. Yeah. And so they're saying that Canada has fallen behind also their G7 peers. So in comparison to their counterparts, it's getting worse and worse. So there you go. I set this table for you, Joey. I know that this is a topic you know a little bit more than I do, I think. So yeah, enjoy. She makes the case that the productivity issues are based around investment. She's right. So to your point,

the metric really is not how hard you're working in the hour that you work or that you need to work more hours. And she mentions this. The speech, by the way, is on YouTube. It's only about 40 minutes long. I didn't link it in the article that I wrote, but you can find it. It's not that hard to find. She basically makes the case that there needs to be investment in Canada to drive innovation and productivity. And she, I think, dances around a couple of things that you and me have discussed and a lot of people have discussed, including other podcasts of great stature, like The Loony Hour or Macro Voices or… Bankless. Bankless, probably. Yeah. Who knows? I don't know if we're talking about economics, but a lot of, a lot of shows with a Canadian angle or Canadian host mentioned

this stuff. And, uh, you know, Mike's Mike Campbell's money talks, all these podcasts that are, I think of, of very high stature, um, mentioned this and, and she dances around a couple of things. I think two of them are more important than others. Maybe three of them, actually. One is that we cannot continue to pretend that government transfer payments and the public sector should be the best or should be the biggest piece of our GDP.

I don't know if you've seen that chart, Len, of Canadian GDP growth over the last quarter. We talk about this periodically. Yeah. But the chart really is like, it's damning. It stands out. It's damning, right? Because the bar for public sector is like seven or eight times the next biggest bar. And oil and gas is like a very small bar, but it's actually on the left side of the zero. It's shrinking, right? We have all it's actually on the left side of the zero. It's shrinking, right? We have all this resource-rich opportunity and we just don't use it at all. In fact, we choose to kind of dance on its grave more often than not, unfortunately. So she talks about that, that it can't be government.

Government is not innovation. That's just not how GDP works. The other thing she talks about is that the oligopolies that exist in the country, and she doesn't talk about it directly. Again, she dances around it. You really got to read between the lines. The oligopolies, that system doesn't lend itself to innovation. Why?

Because it doesn't matter how dog shit your cell phone service is. You can't go from Rogers to Bell to tell us and expect anything fucking different. It's just a waste of time. So what are you going to do? You're going to spend three hours to get $10 off your plan every month? Good luck, man. But it's not innovative. And as a result, those companies don't have to increase their productive capacity.

They just don't have to do it. We have the worst cell phone internet cable packages in the world in this country. The only countries that are worse are the ones that are on the gold machine gun index. And we're not far from that index, by the way. So that's number two. But the third one is that she is saying that businesses are complaining that rates are too high and it doesn't lend itself to an investment-friendly setting. And she says, look, you have to fix this other stuff. Otherwise, rates can't come down. Because if they come down, this problem is only going to get worse. And if it gets worse,

it's going to be harder to get out of. And she's basically saying, look, the immigration thing is not working. The oligopoly thing is not working. The government spending thing is not working. We need real productive capacity increases. And what we're doing is setting us back a decade at this point. And, uh, you know, the G7, I think at the bottom of that seven land is basically anything but, but, uh, G. So like, I, I don't, I don't understand how like, you know, we should be comparing ourselves to Italy and we're like, yeah, but we're still like on par with some of the countries in the G7. Like the G7 is not a real thing anymore. It's sort of a great countries in name only.

I don't know. I highly recommend people watch the talk. There's a reason people like Carolyn Rogers. She's a little more animated than Macklem is and speaks her mind a little more than Macklem does. I think she's great. I honestly do. I really enjoyed the speech. She's honest And I think she's great. I honestly do. I really enjoyed the speech.

She's honest and I think she's right, most importantly. Did you see that? Canada looks like they're going to be moving ahead with rental payments counting towards credit score. This came up at my Easter dinner yesterday. Yeah. Talk to me about this. Yeah, yeah.

So the idea behind this is this is going to help build credit score for to enable people to qualify for mortgages and other loans because right now people that pay rent that isn't captured on your credit score so people oh we'll talk about in a second so the pm is saying that there is something fundamentally unfair about paying rent something like two thousand dollars and this is not being captured on your credit score the same way that if you're paying a mortgage. The unfair is not the rent part. It's that it doesn't go toward your credit score. Right.

Yeah, yeah. And there's more than 3 million adults in Canada that don't have a credit score. That's almost 1 in 10, a little bit less than that. They estimate Equifax in 2022 reports say that a further 7 million people only have limited data that the credit agency could limit their ability to access credit products. So that's 10 million out of 40. So one out of every four Canadians. Yeah, I'm

talking about adults here. That's going to be even it's a pretty bad number. so they report the government of canada is proposing a renter's bill of rights and this is going to be used as a tool to protect renters from low vacancy rates also high prices and other significant challenges this all comes from the budget that's going to be upcoming budget that they're saying it's going to be targeting younger canadians and this is part of the plan. Also, hot off the press, it looks like they have earmarked $1 billion

for national food program for school. It seems like this is going to be the talk of the day for the budget. Teachers have lots of time to feed kids because they're not fucking teaching them, so that's fine. They anyways the government teachers have lots of time to feed kids um because they're not fucking teaching them so that's fine so they say the government through this will also create a 15

million dollar fund for provincial legal aid organizations to help tenants fight landlord abuse and the quote-unquote renovations that's when a landlord evicts a tenant by saying they didn't need to do significant renovations but But in reality, they don't. They just rent it out shortly thereafter for a much higher price. But really, a lot of this stems to the lack of supply. So Canada just hit 41 million people in Canada. And that's an extra million people that are in Canada in just nine months. Yeah. And in terms of the amount of housing out there, it's not meeting the number of people coming here.

It wasn't there a few years ago. Now it's getting even worse. So you have more people trying to buy for the same amount of units that are out there. They're not being built. So, of course, the price is going to be going up. Actually, the vacancy rate is very very low landlords are filling up their units with renters because there's more renters out there than our units and prices going up so this is part of the problem is there's just too many people coming into canada with respect to how many units are

being built every year so i see this man i understand what you're trying to do but i don't know if this is going to achieve what they're trying to say they're going to achieve it's it it sucks if you're paying rent and not having this capturing your credit score i can see that being like i'm not a renter so i'm looking at this from a different point of view but that's probably a good thing but is it going to help them plan a mortgage no probably not other loans maybe but what do you get from other loans more headaches more bankrupt? I don't know. I mean, if it's a good loan, yeah, but how many good loans are out there? Okay, so I'll tell you that this is completely backwards.

I won't say, yeah, you know what, fuck it. My dad owns some properties, and he's damn near cheerful about this new legislation. Because as we've seen over the last few years, Len, when it comes to the relationship between landlords and tenants, where are really most of the advantages at this point? They're with the tenant. Tenants are hard to evict. They can go months without paying their rent. They're oftentimes in rent-controlled units. The province sets limits on how much rents can go up. I think that changed in 2019. So if you have a unit that came online after 2019, there's different rules, but that's a story for another time.

Talking to my dad and my uncles yesterday, they're all giddy about it because there was a time when a person who didn't pay their rent basically suffered no consequences. If paying your rent can increase your credit score, guess what happens when you don't pay your rent? Obviously, it's going to impact your credit score negatively. It's going to nuke you. And so when the landlord decides to raise the rent and you don't pay, the damage now really is going to be significant to the future prospects of the tenant. And no matter what the landlord tenant board says, no matter what the tenant wants to

do, he's a little late, the envelope's a little light, whatever, there is no coming back from that kind of credit damage if you miss payments on your rent. And now the landlords have this tool available to them to make sure that they have cooperative tenants at all their properties and behind all their doors. And again, I get what it's trying to do, but it's missing the bigger picture. It's just simply a miss. And right now it's just in sort of white paper phase. We'll see what it looks like in nine months, but it's not promising, I don't think, for people who are renting. Personally, if I was a renter and I sort of saw this, I might be happy for a minute, but even the people who are not as bright as they should be have to realize that if they can

improve their credit score by paying, then not paying has the equal but opposite effect. So it's a shift in power, for sure. It's a shift in balance of power between landlords and tenants in a way that I think was not really considered, honestly, by the powers that be. That's it for the show, that's your anniversary wrapped it up hope people enjoyed it it's in the books it's in the books thanks for coming everybody we appreciate you guys man you know um so wednesday bob burnett coming back for like the third time in a month or something like that how many i know i think seven months or something like that he's a good guy and i look forward to chatting with him about donald driver yeah driver ask him if he thinks jevon walker was wasted by the by the packers

trying to stretch out donald driver's prime they did wind up with greg jennings anyway who turned out to be great and won a super bowl there but um yeah i think i think they would have more fun with jevon walker anyway doesn't matter good night everybody night, everybody. Driver is not a sterling sharp, and he's damn right. Sterling sharp for sure. Yeah. I like when Shannon got his first turn. Who was the guy? Didn't the Packers have that crazy kick return guy too?

What was his name? Yeah, they did. Devin Hester? Not Hester. Hester was on the Bears. Before that. Before that. Someone in the top.

I forget his name, but you're right. They did have one. I like when Shannon Sharp got in the Hall of Fame. He gave his ring to Sterling. Really? He said he's the only person in the Hall of Fame

that's not the best player in the family. You love it. The humble, they always humble Shannon Sharpe. It's true, man. That guy was getting 100 receptions per year, a time where very few guys were getting like Haywood Jeffries got, and a few others did, but he was doing it effectively.

And that was outdoors in Lambeau Field, right? It's like when you look at big friend Tarkington that's going out, going different time. That guy, when he was throwing for 4,000 yards a season in Minnesota outdoors, that's like throwing 40,000 yards nowadays. That was the time when run first was a big thing. You got to adjust for inflation. So yeah, it's starting sharp.

I can't wait to talk about the, this will probably be hot. It's going to be good. It's going to be good. so uh yeah we'll see you guys wednesday and thank you again for three years until next time take care of yourselves yeah don't be a cock don't forget everybody lots of other stuff on cbp media network including two whites and a blue me joey my brother-in-law mike and our friend will talk about all the problems millennials everybody lots of other stuff on CBP media network including two whites and a blue me Joey my brother-in-law Mike and our friend Will talk about all the problems millennials are having with finance romance and just getting by uh if you like CBP if you like the NHL 94 podcast I guarantee you'll like that one search for it two whites and blue anywhere you get your podcasts we look

forward to seeing you