The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CBP #172 (Other Notable News Stories) - Trump and Bitcoin Continue On (Feat. Dean Linden)

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

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So let me just pass this one to Joey. Okay, perfect. So the notable stories. There are a lot of notable stories this week. I can't believe the Trump one was the most notable. We already discussed it. So we don't have to go into it. For people that are listening and want to hear about it,

just go to our Bitcoin related side of things, because we talked about it at length over there. But either way, first story I want to bring up. Well, you know, before we even talk about anything, I just want to say, Dean, thanks before i even talk about anything i just want to say dean thanks for coming on dean because you are in the united states you've been living there for what you say the last 15 17 years 17 years now yeah and so you have a perspective that is different than us because you are you know you are able to vote there you're able to vote here when i say

they're united states when i say here can. So you have your feet in both countries. And Joey and I have our feet more so here than anywhere else. So you give a perspective what's going on in the States much better than we could give. So I'd like to hear your thoughts on some of these things. We'll start with number one, New York. I know you're in the West Coast and this is the other side of the country. But still, Mayor Eric Adams. Everybody knows this guy.

And this guy is, you know, interesting dude, former cop, I believe, and trying to do his best over there in New York. Anyways, he had a press conference this past week. He showed off these new garbage bins that are going to be rolled out in the city of New York. This is a way of getting to the bottom of the rat problem because it's getting to be so out of hand over there. So typically people now are just putting their bags of garbage on the street and they get picked up. So because of that, rats, they just go simply there, eat away whatever's leftovers. And these bins are hard plastic. So hopefully this alleviates the rat problem.

Either way, homeowners over there will be required to make this transition from the current bag pickup to this new bin pickup by November 12th of this year. And this is not something new. Other municipalities have been using this around the world. I'm not sure if they do it over in your neck of the world, but over here. Yeah, plastic bins. That's just the way you do it. Yeah. And they come by in fact

in toronto it's it's automated the truck goes there and it automatically picks it up and pours it in and puts it back down so the driver doesn't have to get out and move it so it's all automated so this is not something new but new york is now modernizing it's with the 21st century either way a lot of this came down to a lot of this information is interesting because there was a study done and it was done with McKinsey. And McKinsey did this study, $4 million to do this study. And the study included looking at such cities like Paris and Amsterdam. And they wanted to identify which type of bins would work best in New York.

Because in New York, they have to deal with different types of requirements, population density, lack of space due to containers, weather requirements because they get heat, rain, snow, a lot of this shit. Curb space is a problem in New York. So they had to do this study. But $4 million, I know Joey would rip into this one because he's not a big fan of Mayor Adams. And in fact, somebody did some digging into this. The study came with a deck that was 95 slides called the future of trash and so either way i'm wondering if this could have been done at a fraction of the cause but what the fuck do i know i'm just some guy sitting in a basement you know

i saw the picture of of of the mayor rolling this thing down and and then put a bag of trash in it and it was it's outside i've got one of those outside of my house right now like i i don't really understand how this is such you know that the guy is the mayor of new york city got a lot of stuff to do and he's that was kind of a merely the fact that that's an accomplishment because i think that we've seen we've seen a lot of evolutions in trash cans. But the one thing that always amazed me is whenever I went to New York City, you'd walk down the street and they would have those big bags of trash like in like plastic bags sitting there. That always like that always stood out to me. That was always quite out to me. That was always quite amazing to me that they had that.

But the idea that they were celebrating that they actually got the same bins that the rest of the country has now in New York just seemed a little bit. And they paid $4 million to figure that out. That's a good use of money. I don't know. I mean, again, I'm just some dude in the basement. I don't have the ability to truly analyze this, but maybe some other people will question it.

And if you look at the press conference too, they put some tape on the ground where Mayor Adams could reel out that device. Just in case he wasn't sure where to put it. What an event, staged to the nth degree. I love it. And when you see stuff like that, it talks about, do they really know exactly what they're trying to achieve here when you have to have direction to that degree kind of reminds me of biden in a way i mean i know i'm going into the weeds here but uh biden you know he has to be led on and off the stage and um it kind of

reminds me of that in a way but yeah yeah with the tape there like hey stand here with your garbage can and then and then um yeah i'm not sure i I'm not sure Joe could have actually pulled that one off. You know he can't even ride the bike across the street. Remember that video? Yeah, just on Joe Biden, if I could just sort of pontificate just for a second. Go ahead. I think he's a very decent man. I don't, you know, he's had some tragedy in his life. And he's a second. I think he's a, I think he's a very, I think he's a very decent man. I don't, I don't,

you know, he's had some tragedy in his life and he's, he's a very, but I don't think that, um, the idea that we sit there and roll out a guy of that age, um, regardless of he was, you know, super sharp or not, you know, an 82 year old man, you know, working at Walmart for four hours a day, greeting people breaks my heart. That's not, I mean, that makes me sad that that's, that's the idea that we're going to have an, you know, a potentially an 86 year old president doing his set, his finishing up a second term. Even if he's sharp as a tack, I, I just think that is a terrible,

terrible idea. And it's, it's, it, it disappoints me to know him that in the greatest country in human history, this, these old people are being enlisted to have a job that takes it's, you know, runs 13 hours a day and you're getting calls in the middle of the night. It's just, it's not right. It's, it's not, it's not right. Regardless of you think is whatever you think of as politics, the idea that we're rolling this dude out and pretending that he's, you know,

and we're making fun of him because he's a regular 82-year-old guy. Like, we're like, ah, you see now, he's all this, he's. Yeah, but. You know, that's just a hell of a job because he seems to want it too. Like, he's got every opportunity to step down. Like, it's just. 100%. Yeah, it's just like, it must be, must be a hell of a job because he seems to want it too. Like he's got the opportunity to step down. Like it's just 100%. Yeah. It's just like,

it must be, must be getting, let's have a great parking spot at the airport. So there's a couple of points that I want to make. And you touched on one and you hit the nail in the head is that he, it's a job that he wants. And I'll touch on that in just a second. But in terms of like the age,

like we had Munger just passed away, but he was, I guess still sharp at his attack right up until his, his demise. a second but um in terms of like the age like we had monger just passed away but he was i guess still sharp at his attack right up until his uh his demise and also warren buffett is still in his 90s and he's still going strong so i mean in terms of ages i mean if you could do it why not i have no problems with somebody being older as long as they're able to do it can i just say something about that like you just talked about two businessmen. And I know that two businessmen.

So it's, you know, running, being a businessman is different than being the president of the United States. Because we don't deal with, as business people, we eliminate, the whole thing is eliminate the friction, right? And as a politician, you inherently have friction. You have disabled people. You have minorities. You have special interests. You have all those people that, you know, to run an effective, you know, to the standard that we've become accustomed, those people have to have a voice.

They have to be heard and they have to be understood. And you have to be able to navigate more than just your quarterly earnings and all that sort of stuff it's way more it's way more complicated in my estimation and a hundred percent and and and munger and buffett those guys went strong right because they probably the rest of their lives could have been completely falling apart they may have rolled themselves in the office every day they would do a couple interviews and they were going strong but um they could also they could probably work five hours a day or three hours a day or do the interviews that they had to do you know these guys have to be if if if um if the president you don't see him for a couple days it's national news right like where is he

what's happened to him like is he okay is he this is he that and it's it's destabilizing you can't just have these guys like falling down and it's just it's it's sad but on the flip side you touched on something too the fact that this may have been his dream job look he i'm using the term media look he always says that um the guy he beat trump in the last election now we could discuss about the merits of how it was done but he is the president so typically when you win and it's even in canada the same way when you win it almost gives you the right to run again regardless of the state you're in you just because you're the champ you're the dude you're right right want to be the champ you got to beat the champ right so he he has earned that right i think and he has been in

politics his whole life he probably aspired to be the chief for a very long time now he's finally gotten there at a very old age he's not going to give it up easily and as long as he's finally gotten there at a very old age. He's not going to give it up easily. And as long as he's got a shred of will to do it and his family seems like they're more willing than he is, he's going to be there. So will he win again? Do you think that he's, you know, with this, with what's going on with Trump in Pennsylvania there, you know, all of a sudden for the first time and since the debate, nobody there, that news cycle about him stepping down and being replaced by somebody else. This is like he wakes up the next morning. Nobody's asking him to step down anymore because there seems to be this feeling of inevitability. OK, like we can run Kamala. We can run the guy in California.

We can run anybodyala we can run the guy in california we can run anybody right now but as long as that picture with trump and his fist in the air and blood across his face and the and the star spangled banner flying behind him as long as that you know as long as that's circulating there's a sacrificial lamb it's over man like it's it is it's just over and i mean i'm not a i'm not a big trump fan don't get me wrong i'm not a big Trump fan. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a big Trump fan, but I just saw a 78 year old guy hit the deck, presumably getting shot in the air. And his presence of mind was to stand up and yell fight.

I'm not exactly sure who we're fighting. That's, that's a kind of a concern, you know, like we're not, we're not actively in or I'm not sure who we're fighting. Um, and maybe that's a sign of things to come, But the guy's vigorous and he's, I mean, I don't think that, if I'm shot in the ear, I don't know that I have the presence of mind to do any of that. He's a game sevener. That's the guy you want on your team when it's game seven.

He's a game sevener. That's right. Here's a story about late stage fiat. And it's a scenario that took place in bc lululemon store in fact in dc i said bc at the dc district district of columbia located specifically at the 2800 block of clarendon boulevard for people who want to know specifically where this lululemon location is that's it because this lululemon was nailed by thieves now this thing sucks it happens frequently enough that it's not that newsworthy but it was newsworthy enough that the local nbc

station decided to send out a team on location to cover that story fair enough why are we covering it here because well it's not really something that out of the ordinary the first one because you know million times we've seen a million of these coverages before. But while they were there covering it, recording the story, the store was hit yet again by another set of thieves, and they ransacked that place again. The same day, they were hit twice by thieves. And the second time they were hit by thieves was when they were covering the story,

when they were hit by first. And so you can see in the background these people walk in it was a video of three women two of them wearing surgical masks grabbing what they claim to be armfuls of clothing leaving the store I guess the first set of thieves didn't take enough the second ones cleaned up and decided

women? three women yeah and so one of the women even stopped to pick up some of the shit that fell on the floor and because her arms were overloaded so she picked up some of that stuff this is fucked up shit man to see a blue lemon knocked off twice so is it is the story that it was knocked off twice at the same day one time while or that women knocked off kind of like that's not that's kind of a gender so i'm not even focusing on the gender thing. I'm just the fact that they... It's good to see that women are stepping up

and getting into the crime game as well, I think. Well, gender equality, right? We have to... Now, is that story kind of a... Is that a... Because D.C. is sort of a democratic stronghold there, right? Is that kind of what the story is about? Is it crime in a democratic city?

I mean, there's a lot to unpack there. Or is it just a crazy coincidence that they knocked it off twice before they could come? It's just a coincidence. Or have they even knocked it off? No, they have a video coverage team over there to talk about it. And it's a news coverage. And while they're filming it in the background, you see people walk in, thieves walk in and take some stuff i i found it to be very comical and this is the kind of stuff you you expect in a third world country and you know if i hear this

and insert your third world country name here i don't want to make anybody upset i wouldn't be shocked but happening here in the united states the nation's capital right like fuck like this is insane but this stuff is going to happen more frequently because people need the money and i'm not trying to justify this right i'm not trying to say that they're doing the right thing but when you have nothing you have nothing to lose yeah so you might as well go knock something off hopefully you make make a big score and then you can pay for your next bunch of meals with an ill-gotten booty. But, right? Like this is.

So I always say when people, when we get into this conversation about, you know, right and left. And they both have, you know, everybody agrees that crime's bad. But, you know, and in Canada it's more socialized than in America, obviously. But the idea of if you have an opportunity to provide for your children and you believe that they have a future, you will abide. You will abide by the law. Like, I don't think there's just people, but some people are put in desperate situations and some people live in a desperate situation I mean I don't think you go from oh geez I lost my job now I'm knocking off a Lululemon store you're you've got you've got you know you you've

got generations of just sort of things just haven't worked out to you for whatever reason and you're desperate and I don't, you know, whether it's because I live in Seattle, I live in Seattle, and we've, we've obviously had our, had our had our challenges. And I would say that, you know, a lot of that is, as a result of poor municipal, municipal politics. You know, I and I don't, I would say that, I think if you talk to anybody in Seattle, they would probably share that sentiment. But you can go into a Target store. I'm not sure if this is in Canada now.

Go into a Target store, not far from where I'm at right now. Everything, and I mean everything, is locked up. Like, you want to go buy, pull some deodorant off the store, or off the shelf, you got to go buy pull some deodorant off the store you got or off the shelf you got to go get somebody to unlock it and and and and give you deodorant so it's it is um and can you imagine the cost to that like the you know you have to have somebody in the store the cost to target because some people are going to go you know what i'm going to do i'm going to i'm not going to target i'm going to buy it on amazon because i don't want to be you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to, I'm not going to target. I'm going to buy it on Amazon because I don't want to be,

you know, stand there going like I wanted, I wanted a deodorant and a toothbrush and it's all locked up. You know, I wonder, I wonder with stories like that, Lululemon's experience in DC, having all the things locked up,

is this the end of retail? And if it is, if it's the end of retail, there's a lot of big box stores and a lot of big, big places that have a lot of people, families, the greatest families, the richest families in this entire country have a whole bunch of money tied up in real estate, which, you know, it kind of changes the game. If you've all of a sudden, you know, retail's gone. I mean, you can only have so many nail salons and takeout places. So that story, that example you posed from Target of having everything locked up, is that the only store that you've noticed? Or have you seen other stores like that or other Targets in the general vicinity?

Are they also locked up? I don't think it's unique to Target. It's like drugstores have just like Rite Aid or CVS and stuff like that. And this wasn't the case a few years ago. No, no, no, not at all. Like it was sort of since COVID, right? Since COVID. It's, you know, like we all went away. Nobody went into a store for two years.

And then we come back and it's kind of this sort of dystopian type landscape. You almost expect somebody to be standing at the front with an assault rifle and guarding the store and it's just like man yeah this is a banana well the assault rifles are when you get to the parking lot you know you got to get on your belly but what the fuck is like anyways uh chicago i want to talk about a couple of stories about chicago because we're you know the canadian bitcoiners podcast cvp but sometimes we're the chicago bitcoiners podcast no well done so yeah we're uh we're changing so anyways we got wind this past week that in chicago the office vacancy in the downtown core is trending in the wrong direction and just before the pandemic started the vacancy rates were sitting

for offices were sitting around 13%. 13 seems rather high, but that's the number where it was entering into pandemic. Fast forward a little more than four years later, the vacancy rate has almost doubled. It's now 26%. Imagine a little bit more than one in four downtown offices in Chicago are empty and landlords are suffering as a result. And they're not able to collect rent. It's driving down the price of commercial real estate. That's plummeting.

Property taxes, which come from this, is partially the reason why it's vacant, because property taxes are high and it's difficult to collect. And it just spirals out of control. And then crime goes up. Now crime goes up up now you're less likely to rent the place and again that spirals out of control and people not working because the economy is not going well and again that spirals out of control also you have people working from home there's still uh some people doing that so they're less likely to go into the office but this 26 of the downtown office in chicago vacancy rate is not specific it's not just a chicago issue nationally it's almost 18 in the united states that's up 80 basis points year over year this is a huge problem where cities around the country are having a difficult time attracting and keeping people into their

office locations and this is causing a problem where you have the downtown courts of all these cities becoming more difficult to do business and then just you know the crime goes up and the likelihood anybody else would want to go in, it just gets truly out of control. I'm not sure if you want to add any flavor to that. Yeah, I do because that's one of that is something that I'm that's like, and you know, that is one of the unintended consequences

of the way we responded to and it was probably, it was going to happen anyhow but it was the way we responded to the pandemic and locking people down. And, hey, we're on Zoom right now, right? This is, I mean, we're, this is, you know, you're not renting a, like, we're working from home today. So we're prime examples. And this is one of the wonderful benefits of it. However, the ripple effect of those vacancy rates downtown, because you're talking about,

you know, shoeshine people and people that make sandwiches and people that like there is the collateral damage from that. And when you go to downtown Seattle, I'll say this, it's not as bad as it's been made out to be on the national news not nearly as bad however it's still early stage it's still early days like that that vacancy rate and especially those those um you know the days of kpmg or price waterhouse coopers or uh big law firms taking six floors and a big tower with, you know, and all of the prestige and how, like, you know, I've been going up and down some of the, you know, AAA businesses to conduct my own business for years and years and years. And I loved it. It was an experience. There is that, you know, there is well-dressed people and people making money and doing deals.

And the buzz was amazing. And the money just sort of radiates out from those centers. You hit the nail on the head. That is going to be replaced by worse and worse level businesses that are more likely to fail, that are going to, like, add to the decay, and it's, and things are boarded up, it's, it becomes very difficult. And then follow on that, you know, these, these performance, you know, nobody, nobody bargained for COVID, and that there was going to go from being, you know, you know, a 6% vacancy rate to a 26% vacancy rate in the matter of three or four or five years. So, you know, banks got a problem

because, you know, in my, like, like banks only want to lend to people with real estate. So can you imagine, can you imagine the leverage that is on these, you know, on these buildings and the ripple effect that's going to take so how do banks deal with this situation how do they you know where do they how do they deal with this when they when these things have to be refinanced and and the new performer shows a downtrending vacancy or an uptrending uh vacancy rate i uh i don't they got to be sweating well we all have to sweat because the ripple effect of that doesn't sort of end with oh the guy had the guy had some commercial real estate it's it is it's you know we can't have

banks with the exposure that they've got to those and i point over there because i'm looking across lake washington at downtown seattle right now and it is um it's it's not there's no buzz there there's no buzz there or in any downtown across the country. Well, Detroit is a good example because, you know, 60 years ago was thriving. It was one of the largest cities in the United States, and a series of events caused it to come up the way it is right now. But the downtown core, I'm not sure if you've ever visited Detroit

in the past, I don't know, 20 years or so. It's a tough place to visit. There's a lot of boarded up stores downtown. And the houses that were built for the growing population just became vacant. So they just were run down. They were ransacked by thieves for the copper, the piping. And then some of them just they fire just ruined them so it's a sad place to visit in some areas and it just seems to me that's where some

cities might be heading if this trend continues because you have to have a vibrant and lively downtown core to maintain it once it's trending in the wrong direction it's tough to stop it once you have the stigma surrounding it like tough to stop it once you have the stigma surrounding it like look at new york how long did it take new york to turn around oh you know glenn i i was i'm old enough when i went to new york for the first time in like the early 90s and and yeah time square time square was still like peep shows and perverts and all that like i was that was the tail end of it down there but I wasn't participating in any of the perverts. I was just down there observing and it was rough. It was, it was,

it was very, very rough, you know, fast forward, you know, 30 years. And it's a very, you know, it's, it's, it's very corporate, very, you know, like, so it, you know, it can be done. It can be done. And I think that they've got to figure out, because a lot of people say, oh, those high rises, you know, they can convert those to, they can convert those to residences where people live. You can't. There's, most of those floors have one bathroom and all of the windows run on the outside. There's a, we had somebody come in to talk about the likelihood of that. And it's, you know, 90% of those buildings cannot be retrofitted into anything other than high-rise office.

With the exception, and this is kind of interesting, is there's some groups that we've seen that are putting hydroponic, you know, making these things vertical farms. So they would be they would be, you know, you have a 40 story office building that used to house accountants and lawyers, growing food, can you imagine if you had like a central food growing thing in your was, was was your downtown, that would be, that would be an amazing opportunity, not just for not just for those downtowns, but also for the climate and for a variety of things. Because a lot of those places, there's food deserts in a lot of these cities where there's no place to buy food for like 30 blocks

other than the gas station convenience store. And if you had an operating farm where the financial district used to be, maybe that's the way it should have been all along. Maybe we're just getting to where we're supposed to be. Maybe that's the transition and grow food locally and do like that. I know they're talking about 15-minute cities. Maybe this is part of the plan. Who the fuck knows?

But with respect to all this closure in the downtown core of chicago i want to keep on the chicago side of things because i'm not sure if you remember when she from china came to visit san francisco i guess four months ago maybe five months ago either way when he came over they cleaned up that city the homeless were relocated. Feces was picked up. The place looked livable again, at least in the areas where the foreign dignitaries were staying. Chicago is doing the same thing right now with respect to what's going on because they have the DNC convention taking place at the United Center, and that's downtown Chicago. So they're taking the same playbook from San Francisco. They're relocating the homeless, making the area look nice, the whole nine yards.

And it's reported that the homeless people who have been living in one of Chicago's largest and most visible encampments have been asked, i.e. forced to really relocate to a shelter. And, uh, no, I'm wondering if this shelter can be one of the empty offices,

right? It makes sense. You know, you have these empty offices, shove the homeless in there, give them a place to stay. But I right? It makes sense. You know, you have these empty offices. Shove the homeless in there. Give them a place to stay. But, I mean, I'm making a joke of this. It's not a joking matter.

But anyways, Ditka, Mike Ditka, if you remember that dude, his old restaurant has actually been converted into a homeless shelter. So they're using his old restaurant that's now converted to a homeless shelter, and people are being directed over there. So it's, you know, when I see see this it's all for show right the homeless situation homeless problem you're just masking it you're just telling them to go somewhere else or pushing them somewhere else

they still exist and you make make that area look all nice and shiny and the united center will look like a great place to go visit at least for now because, because the DNC is there. As soon as it's done, the same old shit's going to happen. So when I see this, it's just a facade, and I hate this bullshit. It drives me fucking bonkers. Especially when the reason to clean up the city is for a group of people that are setting the political agenda and the tone and the tenor for the next four

years, should they actually not like see all those people? Should they actually not? It makes sense. Yeah. As opposed to not seeing them. I get it. I get it. Maybe if you're it's the Olympics and you're bringing in people from all over the world, you want to sort of, you know, it's different because they're just there to watch a sporting event they're not there to but when you're but when you're politically active and you don't want to see you know and you don't want to see the you know you

want to stay at the nice place when you want to have it that's a great point but these are the people that are setting policy or will have in some way, shape or form be part of that. But they don't want to see. They should say, no, no, leave it the way it is. In fact, we should go to every the convention shouldn't be. Well, I guess it should be in Chicago, but it should be Chicago not cleaned up. It should be in San Francisco not cleaned up. It should be in Seattle not cleaned up. I'm just naming cities because

the Republican cities are shitty places too. They're just not big cities. They're just the hollowed out kind of carcass. They're having the RNC in Milwaukee. They're doing the RNC in Milwaukee.

It's so close. Geographically, I'm not sure how long of a distance. I guess maybe a couple-hour drive. I could be wrong between Chicago and Milwaukee. It's funny that they're so close to each other. Is that by design? I don't know. Is that a conspiracy?

No, it's just funny more than anything. Is it a coincidence, you think? Is it a coincidence, Lance? They got a good deal. They got a good deal. The planner, they're sharing the same planner and since it's located there, not much travel is involved.

Maybe they had the same landlord had two places not far away and he got a two for one deal because he's got 26% vacancy. Did Republicans carry Wisconsin? Maybe that's why or maybe it's is swing state that they want to try to, to Wisconsin is a swing state. Yeah. I don't know anymore.

I don't know if it is anymore, but it's, you know, it's yeah. I, I, I think it is, I think Biden won it last year, but I think it's definitely up for grabs. So that's probably why that the RNC is over there is that they're trying to raise support as much as possible. That's it. Yeah. A couple of stories I want to bring up with the Canadian side of things.

Number one, unemployment in Canada. I'm not sure if you have following this, but it's becoming what some people may call it problematic. And this is a Yahoo story saying that it's the title. Canadian unemployment could exceed 7% if interest rates aren't cut soon. This is according to National Bank. And Canada, if you look at the stats, they've lost more jobs than it created in the month of June. And the unemployment rate

went up by 0.2% from May until June, and it's now sitting at 6.4 percent as of june 2024 so the bank is sounding the alarm and saying that this trend can continue they're gauging the landscape they're looking at everything that's going on um they're saying that the job creation is not keeping up with the population growth so that's also another reason why they suspect that this is going to shoot up past 7%. But the one thing they consider is National Bank may be a little biased in their assessment. Because they want to see rates go lower. So they want to raise as many alarms as possible.

Because as rates go lower, customers are willing to borrow. And they're probably able to make more profits as a result. When credit is hard to give out it's harder for them to make money and you know let's just be honest so they want to see rates go down plus the bank of canada also recently lowered rates 25 basis points they lowered it either last month or a month before but it was in the past six weeks ish and or two or eight weeks so it's you know they they are doing something it's not like they've been standing pat so they have actions you know they are lowering rates

how aggressively well time will tell so yeah i mean go ahead i i think i think the um we're internally at cypress hills we're we're looking for interest rates to start coming down in canada more aggressively than in the United States. But and I think to your point about national bank, I'm not sure if the because the big banks are more diversified in what they what they lend into. But I think for the small regional sort of banks in Canada, they've got sort of an interesting quandary because they've got, you know, when you go to a regional bank in Canada and you go with your thousand dollars and you want to buy a GIC and to be competitive, you got to pay five. You know, you got to they got to pay five percent and they got to turn around. And traditionally they would they would lend that money in a residential mortgage, which nobody's taken mortgages you know nobody's taken mortgages um the in the more robust real estate markets you know like the big cities where there's like the like the multi-million dollar homes people are

swapping very rarely are those are people taking much of a mortgage on those those are sort of cash deals all the time but you know in the in the playground that they have are sort of cash deals all the time. But, you know, in the in the playground that they have that sort of, you know, residential mortgage, they don't have their people are putting money into these into these small banks for the five or six percent GIC, and they have got no place to put it on the other end. They don't have they can't make a spread. Yeah. So I think, you know, I don't know to the degree that the big banks have that same thing, because that's a different that's a different business model that they have in many ways. But I would have to think that they're probably experiencing, you know, a similar,

a similar problem as to where to go with that with that money. It's great that they're getting the deposits, but there's really no place to put it. And that's, that's a problem, right? Having too much cash on hand in that business, it sucks. Turnover in real estate is probably impacting the banks hard because less people here are buying as a result of interest rates being much higher than they were in the past few decades. And I think in the United States, it's even more pronounced because people over there lock in for mortgages for 30 years.

So who the fuck wants to get out of a mortgage at like 2% or less and lock in at today's rates? So you're kind of stuck in the house. But in Canada, it's been noted that inventory is there, but turnover, people buying, has plummeted significantly compared to the past few years, and it's understandably so. Prices really aren't coming down, and there's not enough capital, not enough credit to go around.

And as a result, you know, nobody's willing to buy. Oh, sorry. No, go ahead. Well, I think that I think that the, you know, in the in the 60s, a buying a home was not considered a good investment. It was not. The reason people did it was because they were born in the 30s and they wanted the security of having a home. It was about actually having shelter. I'm saying that for a long time. I remember my dad tells a story about he wanted to buy a house when he was 21, 22 years old. And his parents said, no damn way. It's a terrible

investment. You don't want to buy a house, put your money in the bank and let it compound and all that sort of stuff. You want to be grinding along with having to fix a fence and pay property taxes and all that type of stuff. It's only my generation. And in Canada, remember, you could buy a house where you live in Vancouver or in Medicine Hat, Alberta. You could buy a house for $25,000 in any of those places, right? And now there's this divergence and the crazy stuff that's happening in Toronto and Vancouver. And, you know, and it's gotten to be where, you know, it's a market where people speculate. They don't, you know, it's not about a roof over your head anymore.

And Charlie Munger, you mentioned Charlie, dear sweet Charlie. You know, he believed that a house was for a family to live in and that single people should never own a house. That was kind of his, that was kind of one of his philosophies. I don't know, like, if it really obviously didn't stand the test of time in terms of what history would, would, would suggest that has been a good investment for most families. But it's, you know, it's, it's worthy of note that he was old enough to remember a time when that was just, hey, it's, it's, it's, it's security for your family and nothing more. It's not something where you should own a house and you should be saving money to prosper with. And that has gotten – and we don't know what the truth is

because things have gotten so corrupted that if this unwinds, if this unwinds, I mean, there's guys my age that don't know how to do it any other way, right? You buy up is you, you borrow as much money to buy as big a house as you can possibly take on. And you hang on like crazy. And because it's gonna go up, it's gonna go up, it always goes up, it never, you know, it's, it's just if that turns around, and and, you know, you're making, you know, it's flat for 10 years,

it's a headache. Yeah, a lot of people are expecting and hoping this number go up. It's just the way things continue. And in a lot of cases, it probably will. If rates will go down, you expect the price of homes, they're going to skyrocket once again.

And in Canada, we also have a, word this correctly, a variable of international students, foreign workers. People are just coming here temporarily. But they have to be housed somewhere. They can't just live in a hope and a dream or in a box. They've got to occupy a condo, a basement, a dream or in a box they got to occupy a condo a basement a house somewhere and that takes away from existing inventory from somebody that's already here so it drives up the

competition drives up the price and then so rent goes up and then ownership of the house the price of the house goes up so all this to say that there's other variables that are just going to keep sustaining this and making the price go higher. But in Canada too, they're talking about, I'm not sure if you heard this, but they might even start taxing the sale of primary residence. Over here in Canada, if you have a house you live in, if you sell it, whatever it is you sell it for, it's tax-free. So whatever price you bought it for or you sold it for to sell it for it's tax-free so whatever price you bought it for

and you sold it for to profits it's yours tax-free but they're saying that you there may be capital gains tax that's going to be applied to primary residents so in the in the states they they allow you to you can roll that over uh within one year and it's tax-free otherwise you have to so it's it's the as long as you're reinvesting it in, you can't take it out of the real estate market. Like real estate has been very, very rigged for a long time, right? I mean, like it's, it is, I mean, um, it, it does strike me kind of funny that, that if you, um, for those of us who are, you once you have a house once you're in the game you're basically looked after because everything kind of works because the idea that that that that home is

is your your tax-free safe haven type thing that that works to drive prices up for those people that are looking for affordable housing and now i And now I'm borrowing money from all the equity that I got in my house that I'm going to be able to take out tax-free one day. I'm going to buy like three investment condos that is exactly the place that, you know, Jerry and Sally are going to buy for their starter condo that I've just driven the price up, you know,

100% over the last 15, 20 years. What's the answer here? I could say that whatever happened... No answer. Well, there is one, and if things go really sour, we still have the buyer of last resort able to come in and make sure everybody's made whole. I'm talking about the central bank, whoever it is.

It could be the Federal Reserve or Bank of Canada. They're always there to back people up, at least back up the bank. Print, baby, just print it. So that creates the whole problem. It's just go back to where we started from with Bitcoin. Why do we like it? Well, it's coded that there's only so many in existence

and you can't manipulate it the same way you can with, you can't manipulate it at all. Maybe the price, but in terms of how many in existence you can't do that. It's just, it is what it is. And if you like it, run the code. If you don't manipulate at all maybe the price but in terms of how many resistance you can't do that it's just it is what it is and if you like it run the code if you don't fork it try something else but you know what you're always welcome to come back to do we still hate shit coins on this show yes with a fucking passion okay yeah let's just be honest uh fiat currency is a form of that right like yeah what is a fiat currency? It's, I can't audit it.

I don't know how many is in circulation. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow in terms of how much is going to be in circulation. It's managed by a select few people. I'm talking about a shit coin, right? Like, that's the, so it is what it is. That's good. That's well done, Len. I think that is probably one of the better descriptions I've ever heard of Fiat

currency. That is a shit. Thank you. Backed by nothing, but nothing. Yeah. I mean, what is,

what it is anyways, you know what? We've been at this for an hour and 30. I don't want to keep you too much longer. So I think it's a good time to, to end the show. Now, Dean,

is there any stories you want to bring up before we sign off? Anything you want to bring up? Because I'm going to just pass it over to you. I've been steering. I've got nothing on my mind. I've enjoyed this immensely, Len. I would love to come back again sometime. Awesome.

I appreciate that, Dean. Now, before we do sign off, maybe I could just hand you the baton. And maybe if people want to reach out to you where they can find you, you can just say, you know, last few words before we. Yeah. You know, if anybody wants to talk about anything regarding Cypress Hills Partners, if you want to catch up to me about what we're doing with Luxfolio or what's not what we're doing, but what is what is being done with Luxfolio,

I'd be happy to chat. Hit me at Dean at DeanLinden.com. But Dean, thank you so much for coming on with that. We will be at this later this week. Madex is going to be, it's a prerecorded interview from some time ago, but it's going to be released,

I think on Wednesday. So you'll hope you enjoy it. It was dynamite the last time he was on the show and it will be dynamite again. So yeah, thanks so much, Dean. Thanks so much.

Take care. Bye.