The Canadian Bitcoiners Podcast - Bitcoin News With a Canadian Spin - The CPB #163 (Other Notable Stories) - BoC Stability Report, Free Money for Homeowners, Temporary Residents

Episode Date: May 15, 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: -financial struggles -the end of social security -US renters getting hosed -TD fined…again -CPP taking a haircut -BoC’s financial stability report -no more temporary residents 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.com ⁠Discord: https://discord.com/invite/YgPJVbGCZX 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/cbp⁠⁠ The 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, and we hope you enjoy the program. That was good. 101.51. That's perfect. Okay. Let's get going here. Notable stories. I wish it was a previous name. I got home from work today and I saw the whatever, the thing you write every week, the wrap up.

And it's like 60 points long. So there must be a number of notable stories you're interested in covering here. Because we didn't cover 60 of them in the first hour. So we lost a shot. And I left some stories on the cutting room floor in the first hour. So either way, Joey, there's lots of stuff we got to do.

We should actually sell this on our Patreon or something. When we set it up, yeah. It's not happening. Anyways, new homebuyers in the United States. Looks like they may be subjected to some form of a targeted UBI because President Joe Biden was on twitter yesterday or two days ago the story this is yeah i can't believe this so he was on twitter and he wrote that he has a housing plan and what is this housing plan he has well he's thinking about giving 400 a month to

households who buy their first home no so not individuals but households so 400 given to the actual household per month and that money will be giving out to those first time home buyers for a period of two years unreal so the question really initially comes up is this good politics because i i understand what they're trying to achieve. It's targeting a small segment of the population. We have to be honest. It's not covering a lot of people. So you're going to be impacting positively a very small section of the population. Renters who don't have enough scratch out there to buy a home,

well, they're going to be shut out and continue to be shut off from the marketplace. They have no access to the $400. People already owning homes, they're going to be shut out and continually be shut off from the marketplace. They have no access to the $400. People already owning homes, they're going to be on the outside looking in. So this type of politics is going to be just impacting a very small amount of people. And what happens when that $400 runs dry? Because anybody who remembers what happens with a subprime some 15 years ago, those subprime mortgages, it was cheap, cheaper for a period of time until it was priced in as per the market. And then at that point, people were unable to afford their house. This won't be as drastic as a subprime because we're dealing with a very small segment of population.

It is as dumb, though. It is as dumb. Yes. It's on par with that. And on top of that, they're probably going to be screened in at the current mortgage rates. So they're not excluding the $400. That $400 will just be extra money that's coming in. But if rates go up or if the economy continues to tank, somebody loses their job, a number of different variables comes into play here.

They're not going to be able to afford a home. So you already have right now $34 trillion in debt. That's what the US is right now. They're spending a trillion dollars annually a year just to deal with the debt. That's it. That's $400 a month. Where's this money coming from? It's going to be more debt, right? So what happens when you pile more money into the debt? Money gets devalued. It continues to get devalued, making hard assets like homes even more expensive. And then the cycle continues. So you're just dealing with a problem by creating a bigger problem that's going to be uncovered.

You just roll it. The selling of the future for today, it's I'm not a fan of it. But then again, this is targeted UBI. I can't believe they're even thinking about this thing, but hey. How do you sell this to the UBI proponents? I'd be curious to hear what Floyd Marinescu would say about this. Whether you agree or disagree with UBI, the people who buy homes are not the people who need it, right? So that's one problem I have. Other problem, Len, in terms of the means testing for this, not for the UBI itself, you mentioned how you get that, you have to buy a home. But when you go to the bank and apply for a mortgage, does the bank factor in that you'll have an extra

$400 per month if you buy a house? Does that drive the price of housing up? If it doesn't, I mean, it's still not great because as you mentioned there, you're going to get used to spending that money. This happens all the time. Okay. No one lives below their means anymore. Unfortunately, that's how we get to this point. If it doesn't, great. But if it does get factored in before you buy the house and that's how you can get pre-approved for whatever your offer is going to be, man, that's going to drive up the price of homes, man. That's going to make sure that there's more scarcity, man. That's going to make life less affordable for everybody. Um, and again, like Biden sort of, uh, adding to the, adding fuel to the fire here, asset holders are going to benefit greatly from

whatever printing event comes next. And you're just adding more, more fuel to that fire with stuff like this. People are going to be dying to get into homes, trying their hardest to make sure they get that 400 bucks. I continue to ask the question, it's unpopular. Maybe it's a bit abrasive. Show me a person who needs 400 extra dollars every month and has made decisions that put them in a place

where they can't afford their life. And I'm not suggesting that everyone is in this position, but many are. These people don't make good decisions with the 400 bucks. Did we not talk about UBI even before Floyd came on? And by the way, not a shot at Floyd. I think he makes a lot of good points about a lot of the policy positions he has. I may not agree with them, but at least they're well thought out. Meanwhile, policies like this in the States, we talked about a family in Florida where the

woman got UBI and took her kids on a trip and got her hair done. These people aren't that sharp. And if you just keep giving people money when clearly they don't know what to do with it, at what point are you calling this throwing good money after bad? The worst part about this, when you say it's good politics, these people are going to vote Democrat anyway. I don't even think it's good politics. It's not like you're getting additional votes for this money. That's the thing I would point to. I realize that it's going to be popular among your base, but they're still your base. You're not going to lose these people if you don't give them the $400. That's the thing I don't really get. I don't understand that part of the politics the thing i don't really get i don't understand

that part of the politics so overall i would say this is like a not a not great move um on the part of the biden administration but i mean not not surprising right nothing surprising about that i like what boom dust is right i'm not i'm not repeating that but yeah but you're right they probably for the majority are going to be voting democrat i don't know but i'm not trying to defend you'd imagine that though right like i think i think that's right it's just the thing is i'm wondering how many people it's going to turn off like if you like as i mentioned a renter and you just don't have it and you're not going to be able to afford it yeah those people how many of them are going to look at this and say i'm pissed off with this

yeah i'm not going to get access to it or an existing homeowner like they're saying i'm pissed off at this i'm not going to get access to this so you're probably going to gain a few but how many are you going to lose at the same time it's a net loss i would imagine not only that four hundred dollars a month i'm not sure how many people are going to take advantage, sorry, how many households are going to take advantage of it, but you're just adding it onto the debt. There'll be a bunch to take advantage of it. How could they not? If you're on the cusp of buying a home and you're like, man, we could probably do it,

but you have a kid on the way or some other expenses coming up and you're like, ah, we can't. Now you're going to be like, yeah, let's do it. Let's pull the trigger. Because you're making two assumptions, right? One, the program will continue in perpetuity. That's not a bad bet, honestly. It's a safe bet, I think, in a lot of ways. And then the other part is that the home price will continue to appreciate. I don't think either of those are guarantees, though the first is better than the second. Again, isn't the big problem here too that like banks ultimately are the ones who are taking this risk and so there is no risk like they just get bailed out all everything is

backstopped like there's clearly additional moving pieces here that could that could cause problems but they don't actually have to factor any of that in because it's ridiculous it's completely ridiculous you froze for a second there yeah i'm 100 in agreeance with you yeah is they take whatever risk they want and whatever profits they gain from it it's theirs but if they don't do well and it's eventually they go tits up it's taxpayers that are or yeah you know what it's every u.s dollar user anybody adjacent to the u.s dollar gets impacted by it that's just a sad reality but you know what it's it's a good segue to the next story i have it's a cn sorry cnbc story so this is again normie news we could call it they say that 29 of households jobs, but struggle to cover basic needs.

And there are one emergency away from poverty. And this is it. Check this new term out. I came up. I've never heard this term before. Can't wait. So it's called Alice. Yeah.

It's for assets, limited income, constrained, employed. It's another term for middle lower middle class it's a wage you're a wagey a wagey yeah wagey yeah it's another way of just saying lower middle class your asset limited income constrained and employed but they're throwing in its alice as a way to god can you imagine people just coming up with names for you constantly like i just it's like so demeaning and degrading but anyway go ahead

so there's they say that currently nearly 40 million families so not individuals 40 million families or about 29 of the population are defined as alice that's a significant amount 29 of the population wow wow on top of this, Joey. Wait a minute. Where is this? Here? The United States. The United States. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Still, it's 29% of the population. Probably higher here, honestly. Yeah, okay. So, that's

Alice. And on top of that, you have 30, almost 30 million Americans, not, I'm not talking about families, but actual individuals, that live in poverty. And this comprises 11.5 half percent of the total population so alice plus the people living in poverty doing len math that's 40 percent ish right off the bat of american people that are financially fucked yeah that is a significant amount of the population now throw in some other factors here you have credit card debt

right now it's over a trillion i think the lumber at last saw was 1.2 1.3 trillion what the fuck it's i'm just splitting hairs so they're saying also delinquencies on payments for these credit cards are shooting up the highest in 12 years how much longer can this last it's got to be the burr has to come much sooner than a lot of us anticipate right if you're looking at 40 are just struggling and they're not going to be able to get out credit cards it's not going to be it's not going to be burr it's going to be it's going to be forgiveness and so like so i'm just adding that into the same yeah yeah i would i would too but people people who are supporting like whichever politician does the jilee, everyone's going to say, it's not inflationary.

We're not running the printer. It's not the same as debt issuance, blah, blah, blah. Okay, I guess. But anyone paying attention will notice that the price of gold goes to $4,000. Bitcoin goes to $500K in a night when that stuff comes into play. It's crazy that Americans... When was the last time you were in the States? Why don't I start there?

When was the last time you were in the States? Before this decade. I'll tell you, I was there in October last year for a Skins game. I was in Washington. You went to Detroit too recently. I went to Detroit the year before for a Skins game.

This year I went to Washington. Len went to Detroit too recently. I went to Detroit the year before for a Skins game. And this year I went to Washington. Len, my wife and I got there a little before everyone, so we couldn't check into the hotel. So we thought, why don't we go to Walmart and get beers and food or whatever, whatever our contribution to the tailgate tomorrow. Was this in Maryland or D.C.? It was in Maryland. No, it was in D.C.

It was in D.C. It was in D.C. And it was like fucking 10 minutes from the White House, like close. So whatever, we're in Walmart there. And I said to my wife, everyone here looks poor. Everybody. People are screaming at each other. There's no obvious order in the aisles.

You see more ass cracks than full sets of teeth um you name it like all the telltale signs and i gotta give you one stat here yeah washington interestingly enough i'm talking about dc is has the most millionaires per capita highest income disparity in the world. That city. Yeah. It's up there. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. It's. And so like you go on that Walmart and it's,

and everyone looks poor and stupid, but let every cart is full of fucking shit. Like, what do you mean shit? Like electronics and video games and like dumb houseware stuff and gadgets. Are they living or stolen? They're going to buy the shit, but like it's shit that clearly you don't need.

Clearly you don't need, you know? And like when people say like, oh, like the US has 40% of its population under the poverty line or whatever, whatever that was you just gave, ALICE. ALICE. Whatever the term is. The thing I can't help but wonder is like, is this just a

bad case of keeping up with the Joneses that's gone completely wrong over 50 years of free debt, basically? Is that how these guys got here and now it's just too late to turn back? They'll just spend and spend and spend because their neighbors are spending and spending and spending. But the thing is that neither the neighbor or the person catching up to the Joneses actually has the money. There are no actual Joneses in the story, but everyone thinks that they're trying to keep

up. But the whole thing is just a nightmare whirlpool of despair and debt. That's how it seems to me over there, the times I've been. Joey, how many people out there have high-end? I don't see the same thing here. How many people have high-end cell phones everyone does but cell phones you need it i know but you get a moto g from the point the point is that like the phone thing is deflationary right like yeah the price

of cell phones is going up a bit but at least the fucking quality is going up and they're subsidized they're subsidized great example right like everything is subsidized goes up in price anyway anyway it's all relative you could buy a cheap moto g for 100 bucks and still do exactly what you're doing with your yeah but you can't post on instagram with from your moto g without people doing the exact same thing so with your camera your camera stinks don't matter it's still going to be like 13 megapixels which is i don't know you know i mean like people just want the best they'll pay for it and without any thinking about what's going to happen in the future they'll just put it on credit and fucking deal with it there is like a very there's a very unpopular discussion

to have here that i won't have about what social supports have done to the general intelligence of the population and until we start talking about these things, we're just never going to solve these problems with debt. You're going to keep getting policies that give people money. They're not going to know what to do with it and you're going to have to give them more money. Policies that ensure that people need to go into debt to get things done. They go into the debt and they can't pay it and we got to forgive it. I tweeted that picture the other day. That was somebody on my fucking Instagram feed. That's somebody I know. Okay. Not well enough to care what they think of me, but this idea that like this person is teaching

about to teach a class at a major American university about behavioral psychology of cats, who the fuck is paying for that course? And even better, who the fuck is paying that person to teach it. We're done. We're done, man. We're finished. This party is over. Now you're just waiting to see when the cops break it up, but they are going to break it up. And I don't know if you've ever stayed at a party too long, Len,

but the sort of people that are around when the cops come to break up a party are not the people you want to be hanging out with. Those are the people who are left at the party right now. It's not a good situation at all, at all in the States for a lot of reasons. Some of them we can't talk about, unfortunately, but you guys get the idea, right? You keep giving people money and they keep fucking things up. You got to decide at some point whether it's worth continuing to give the money

or you got to come up with a better idea. They don't seem to have one because you don't get votes with better ideas. That's another problem, another huge issue in allacies uh but we're all suffering from this that 400 story i just mentioned a couple stories ago this is a good story that's going to piggyback off that it's what u.s renters data and so it's time joy you and i open up the terminal we haven't opened up eternal for where's where's s? We got to get SB over here. Because this is actually a story from Bloomberg. So they say, well, Bloomberg says that rent in most major U.S.

metropolitan areas have risen some 1.5% faster than wages in the last four years. Am I gone or am I still there? You're still there. Okay. It was blank on my screen anyways so yeah it the rent has increased 1.5 percent faster than wages over the last four years and this is from a zillow group study from 2019 to 2003 so income rose some 20 an average but the rent is up 30 over the same period of time so you're falling behind your

your rent is a little more higher a little more of a year yeah this is just an average too by the way of over the nation because there are hot spots in the u.s like tampa and jacksonville for instance where the difference is much much greater and the rental housing costs have outpaced salaries all it all but six of the top 50 metros that's insane san francisco is one of those six by the way i guess nobody really wants to live with homelessness and crime and strange landmine fields yeah i guess not but hey it's uh i guess that's good news for people who are renting you get a good deal out there so yeah it just goes to show you like rent it's not you're paying you're paying way more than what you're collecting in.

When they say inflation is this number, what the reality it's much, much higher. Your wages are not keeping up with that. You're just falling further behind. These people that are renting, they're going to be continually renting for a long time. They're not going to get access to that $400 just fucked all over. I feel bad for them. What can you say? I don't know.

I don't know what to say to people who are renting. There's no fix for any of this. Especially if you voted for some of these politicians and policies. How many terms has Pelosi done in California? What's the number? 10? 12?

I don't know. It's been like 40 fucking years you want to keep putting her in there fine you know you're gonna have these problems her husband's fighting off people with hammers though she's he's busy he's been busy that guy he's been busy yeah fighting off did he end up getting to the bottom of that case do you want to really get to the bottom of that or would you prefer not to know the details i i don't want to know what happened in the home but hammer in the middle of the night like the police get there and like pants were worn like come on i just don't you know

whatever it's fine we probably just lost our monetization anyway but uh yeah i mean what do you say to renters how do you how do you say how do you say to a renter just keep renting things will get better how do you say to a renter, just keep renting, things will get better. How do you say to a renter, especially here in Canada, I know this is an American story, but you're seeing the media here clearly carrying water for the powers that be. And it's not necessarily just government, by the way. I think it's corporate powers as well. Carrying water with stories like, maybe owning a house isn't that great a thing. Of course, it's a great thing.

Tell them that the local blackouts are not going to take into effect this coming oh my god i know that way i know bread and circuses yeah yeah something to that right but yeah it's bad man like the messaging is clearly shifted here as people as as everyone sort of realizes that if you're renting you're never going to be able to own a home now right i don't i don't think certainly not in any like major canadian metropolitan metropolitan area. But the States is just as bad. People often hear talking about how our wages have split from the cost of homes so significantly since the 80s.

But it's happening everywhere. Maybe not quite at the same pace or with the same inertia, but it's definitely happening everywhere. More and more people are waking up to this and they're going, hey, wait a minute. I thought if I saved, I'd be able to buy a house. Actually, it turns out that every time you save a dollar and don't invest it in real estate, you're losing money. How's that?

That's tough. That's how you get to a place where people don't want to work and become apathetic. Apathy is the greatest enemy of a functional democracy for a number of reasons, but clearly creeping up here, you can see it on the horizon being a problem there's a story joey that just it's screaming to be talked about well you're in charge of the story so it's a fox news story by the way all right it's talking about san francisco because we just mentioned san francisco might as well talk about them uh the city is buying vodka shots for homeless alcoholics and it's all part of a taxpayer stop this can't be a real story come on

i did some digging here joey it's free beer and vodka shots for homeless alcoholics the managed alcohol program Check it out. This is a pilot program designed to help people with severe alcohol use disorder, AUD. And it's a harm reduction approach that aims to improve the health. I hate harm reduction. This show is decidedly anti-harm reduction. I don't know. I'm speaking for you too, Len.

We are decidedly anti-harm reduction i don't know i'm speaking for you too len we are decidedly anti-harm reduction on this program well they're they're trying to do this and reduce the reliance on emergency services so i'll give you a breakdown of this managed alcohol program so they have a goal they're trying to reduce the alcohol related harm emergency department visits and public intoxication incidences for high risk individuals and they want to provide a safe space for medical supervision social support services and regulated access to alcohol okay okay yeah safe supply for for smirnoff okay it's a targeted situation here where people experiencing homelessness and chronic aud are going to get access to it. This launched as a COVID response program.

Just loving it. And this is to incentivize people to stay in isolation and quarantine settings, but it's still going on today. They'll be isolated. All right. Yeah. Go ahead. Keep going. be isolated all right yeah go ahead keep going the program it's evolving from its pandemic roots into a long-term initiative with plans to expand to 20 beds with a focus on servicing the latinx

and indigenous communities vodka and beer i can't can't say enough about this what are we gonna even you wanted to talk about this what is there to talk about how can we add any color to this story we got guys on the street who are like clearly addicted to drugs and booze what are we gonna do what we're gonna give them some like what are we talking about here i just love it it's acceleration the mind of an addict is not, it's not, it doesn't, the wires are not connected the same way like your mind and my mind work. When you talk to an addict about the addiction, it's beyond their control. You know, like it's an illness truly. And I sympathize with that crowd quite a bit because I've seen it firsthand through Wayside.

I'm thankful for all the experiences I've had with them over the years because I never was exposed to this when I was a kid. I don't have any alcoholic friends or people I can look to to see what addiction looks like firsthand. I rely on Wayside to give me that experience and it's an unpleasant one, but it's one that's beyond the control of these people. On the other side of that coin is that when someone checks into a rehabilitation facility or an agency like Wayside that's abstinence-based, they know it's going to be hard. You can treat alcohol withdrawals, which is basically what these guys are trying to treat, by the way. You can treat alcohol withdrawals with certain medications, anxiety medications, heart medications, things like that. Because withdrawals, at the end of the day,

everyone who's had too many beers on a Friday or a Saturday has had the Sunday scaries. The Sunday scaries, that anxious feeling you get is in part driven by alcohol withdrawal. It's very minor, very short-lived, and doesn't have the depth, obviously, that someone who's addicted to alcohol would experience after years of binge drinking. But the same way you can't fight that feeling, these guys can't fight it either. And giving them more booze to solve the problem doesn't fix anything. It's just so stupid. It's stupid policy that stupid people think is smart, but it doesn't actually help anybody. And there's lots of evidence for this.

Like harm reduction is popular here in Canada against all the data showing that harm reduction is on the whole sort of a net negative. Certainly safe supply in the same way that these guys are giving away beer. If you're giving away heroin or whatever, fentanyl, the harm reduction is temporary if present at all and you know like this is an easy one len i don't know why they would go through with something like this unless like i said you're just trying to make stupid people happy it just seems to me like we're doing this way too often everywhere you know california obviously especially easy to talk about because they just fucking love doing this kind of dumb shit in that jurisdiction.

But there's other places too that are doing the same kind of dumb shit. You hear stories like this, though. Doesn't it make you think we're so close to the end? Yeah, of course. Right. Of course I do. Of course I think we're close to the end. Man, I'm telling you, Len, we joke about the CBDC timeline.

I think that's coming ASAP. I think there's going to be a real push to get everyone off of self-custody Bitcoin. I think there's going to be a real push to make sure that people can't leave the country with their capital. There's going to be a war. There's people on Twitter who I believe are credible, relatively smart people talking about the next false flag being something to do with alien invasion or alien presence in the sort of near universe.

None of this stuff is off the table. Anyone who thinks that there's a non-zero percent chance that the end of sort of societal, the end of the societal fabric that you know and love is not that close. I don't know, man. I'd love to know what you're looking at that tells you that it's not that close, but I think a lot of us feel differently and the evidence really is overwhelming on our side, I would say. It's just going to happen very soon. I see this and I'm just like, it made me laugh. It was just a true acceleration story. But yeah, savings. Let's talk about savings because it's it.

I guess it's another good discussion because there's some interesting stats with respect to savings in the United States. And it was reported that about $2.1 trillion worth of savings have been wiped out of the U.S. economy since August 2021. So all those stimmy checks that went out, people's bank accounts that they were slightly inflated, there was an uptick in money sent to people's bank accounts, credit card debt that was being paid off. People were spending money, at least wisely for the most part in some respects at least from what i can see all gone as you mentioned 70 billion dollars 70 billion dollars a month of savings have been depleted from american savings accounts and this has been going on for over two years 70 billion a month and credit card debt went from 330 billion to a record 1.1 trillion dollars nice when you talk about this type of thing what happens is how many modern warfare skins can you buy for a trillion dollars in credit card debt

they better be damn worth it it must give you some sort of benefits and bonuses in the game it just can't be just strictly just look you know, a look. Anyways, this money all flows uphill, right? Like when money enters into the market, it temporarily may enter into people's bank accounts, but they have to spend it, right? They have to pay for food. They got to pay for transportation. They got to pay for housing, all that. So it's spent, but it will end up eventually

in people's bank accounts or corporations' bank accounts that they're already well off because they're the ones providing the goods. They're the ones providing the services. And they're the ones that they don't need to spend the same way that other people need to spend. They'll just hoard all this money. So as more money comes flooding in, just the people that have,

they're going to have even more. The people that don't, they're going to have even less by comparison. And it just goes to show you that this whole thing is it's just like i say it's gonna blow up very soon i don't know when but we're talking trillions here that's a fucking huge number and i don't know what else to say it's just it's mind-blowing that people aren't fucking just calling these people out and saying we did fucking something wrong but nobody's saying much they're just great great point by you though on the trickle up economics of stimulus and savings and whatnot right savings are meant to be spent on large items and so you benefit uh the asset

holder uh from whom you purchase the item the car dealer the apartment building whatever right um that's what when people talk about covid dealing with largest wealth transfer there's some discussion about you know the sort of broad strokes mechanisms, you know, they closed all mom and pop shops, had to get rid of those stores and you were able to shop at a Walmart and go get a McDonald's burger, but you couldn't go to the gym, couldn't support a local business, whatever. Right. That's one piece.

But the piece that you're talking about is the bigger one. It's the one that's less discussed, especially in traditional media. Every dollar that was given to you by the government, you're paying for twice in the inflationary measure that comes from that. And by losing it to a corporation and giving them more power, more pricing power over you, more dominance over you. Insane, man. And I think the biggest problem, and we talk about this sometimes on the show, you and I, we talk about it offline too too in some of our group chats and when we're just shooting shit. But the problem is a lot of people haven't realized how bad it is yet. And when everyone figures it out around the same time, which our species seems really good at doing any way out, you get, what is the famous line? Rational people doing irrational things. And when you get to that point, you have a problem. And again, I don't know how close we are. I think we both agree that we're closer than a lot of

people realize. And if you look at policies around the way that people share information online, not just here in Canada, but all over the world, it seems to me like we're not the only ones who think that having everyone looking at the same hive mind and noticing that everyone is in the same boat is a bad idea. It seems to me like there's a lot of people who understand it's a bad idea. And I think the clamps are going to come down on that too, for exactly that reason.

Did you take a look at the Bank of Canada's financial stability report yeah it looked like a guy on a bosu ball on a pogo stick that's about how stable we are we're looking these days so this is it came out last week it's their stability report for 2024 and some key points i'm reading it straight from the report i'm not sure coding. I'm not just not my commentary. You can read it. I'll put a link to the report in the in the chat. So they say Canada's financial system remains resilient. And they say over the past year, financial system participants, including household businesses, banks and non bank financial institutions have continued to proactively

adjust to higher interest rates. But they do say that the rates of arrears on credit cards and auto loans for households without a mortgage. These are people that don't have a mortgage. No other major expense. Yeah. So the rates of arrears for credit cards and auto loans, it's back to pre-pandemic levels and continues to grow. And this is for people that

are renters, and outright homeowners. So people that even own a home outright that doesn't have a mortgage is part of this list. They say that about half of the outstanding mortgages are held by borrowers who have yet to face higher rates because they locked in for a long enough period of time and so they're going to be coming up and they're going to be paying significantly higher mortgage rates once they renew their mortgage there's a chart in there's a chart in the report for people who haven't seen it go look at the chart with the the bar chart there for the renewals it's fucking wild sorry to cut you off keep going no no problem so this is all to say that the people that do have mortgages that are going to renew they're going to be spending a

larger portion of their income on their mortgage and that means less money they could spend on anything else be it vacation movies car payments new car anything it just it has to go towards the mortgage because you have to pay that unless you want to sell. So they also say that business insolvencies have increased steadily since early 2022 and more sharply since the middle of 2023. If you look at that chart, its number go up. That's business insolvencies. So there's lots of things in this report. They're saying it outright. They may say that the financial system remains resilient. They provide a lot of context that things are really not looking all that great.

Read the report. Check it out. They have great charts. You can even just, there's a lot of eye candy on there. But the common theme is things are not looking all that great. BOC did a good job on this. I think this is good for two reasons. One, like you said, there's a lot of visuals here, but I'll be honest, I didn't read the

whole thing word for word, but it's written in layman's terms by and large. So let's say the only exposure you have to some of this stuff is you listen to our show. You will know what a lot of these terms mean. When we talk about stuff like insolvency, for example, or stuff about credit card debt, or stuff about variable rate fixed payment mortgages, variable rate, variable payment mortgages, stuff we've talked about over the years, it's all here. And it's clearly, this is another thing I think is interesting about this report this is geared toward gen pop don't you think anybody with half a mind could digest this yeah when did they start doing data reporting and analysis for the general population i'm not sure if this is geared towards

those people i don't recall the last year. It's not geared toward bank economists or people at that level. It's much lower than that. But is this common amongst this type of report? They do other reports, but I'm wondering, I would like to compare this to previous years to see if this has been dumbed down. And if that is the case, there's a hidden message behind it. Yeah, some good comments here. Households and

businesses should also continue to be proactive planning for higher payments when mortgages and other debt renew at higher interest rates. To give you an idea how bad things are, 34% of mortgages at the moment, or actually, I guess we'll move on to this here. 30% of mortgages right now are variable rate mortgages with fixed payments. Once the renewals hit, about 62% of mortgages will be on that, will be renewing coming out of that standard of mortgage. So people who have had the same mortgage have been paying interest only, negative M as it's called usually, extend and pretend, they'll have to get aligned with the current state of affairs as far as the interest rates compared to their mortgage.

And also then there's, I think there's, I don't remember what the outcome was, but remember Freeland was talking a little while ago about how she didn't want banks to clamp down on renewals when it came to getting loan to value in line again, because most people put money down. And so your loan to value of the house has to be whatever it is, 20% or 80, 20, 80, or whatever the numbers of your bank that you agreed upon. But as people were having the loan grow, they got out of whack. So not only did you have to add to your monthly payment when the mortgage renewed, but you also had to pay a lump sum to get back on side with the bank. And so I don't know if whatever came from that, but if that happens too, how are these

people, how are you going to pay? No one I know has $20,000 sitting around. I'll just tack it on for another year or two on their amortization rate. Whatever, whatever. But it's a bad situation. And the bank, for all the good in this report, I think they're selling it short, the situation. You can't tell me on one side that the bank is sounding the alarm about emergency and GDP per capita and things are headed the wrong direction,

the unsustainability of housing prices, whatnot, all that stuff from Carolyn Rogers about a month ago or six weeks ago. And now they release this report and say that the economy is strong. I don't fucking buy it. Nobody should buy it. And again, the reason this is- You have to say that. She says she was the one who was painting the bleaker picture.

She wasn't like that in the presser last week uh and also this to me the reason this is geared to answer my own question from earlier the reason this is geared to to the lay person is because the lay person saw that story about rogers and now the lay person is hopefully going to see this and say oh maybe things aren't as bad as they're they should be or as they say they are but i think anyone who's you know renewing like damn if you bought a house for a million you know peak covid prices and now you're going to go from you know let's say your payment was two thousand dollars at one percent you know you're probably going to go to six percent now if you stay variable uh look at the p-van uh sorry p-man van he talks he says i may i got asked

last year from 2.2 to 7.25 that's insane that'll add that'll add uh what i don't know i can't even contemplate depending on how much it's left. On $2,000, that'll probably add, I don't know, PMEN, you tell me. You've got to be close to $4,000 probably. You almost do a double. That $2,000-ish a month

that would normally be spent on anything else is not being spent on anything else. The economy shrinks. The economy shrinks. One thing leads to another. Good times being had up here in Canada. done anything exactly the economy shrinks yeah the economy shrinks and yeah yeah we know one thing leads to another good times being had up here in canada um i gotta ask you the bank of canada like just in the past their performance in the past say six months dog shit dog you think so yeah i'm looking at this rich okay rich ds go listen to the episode we did because he talked

about this a lot with tiff macklem and and this the stuff that macklem has done or has not done i think rich you know rich would say that uh macklem had to come to jesus moment in the last year about rates and even though the pressure is mounted he knows how badly he fucked up the first two years of the pandemic and uh he has no choice but to keep him high no matter how much the pressure mounts political social or otherwise and he's going to wait until the last possible moment to cut yeah and when he does that will be a mistake too he will cut too late uh the pain will already be in the pipeline so you know the performance of the bank of canada hasn't been great but i think the thing you would say if you were an apologist for boC would be, look, what are we supposed to do? We're playing next to the biggest kid in the sandbox.

It's hard for us to build a castle if this guy is just stampeding all over the place. That's the downside of living next to the USA. Biggest market in the world, strongest capital market. But man, how do you set policy? That's the problem. You're always playing catch up and thinking about how people are viewing your capital market versus their capital market. We already have so many roadblocks in place that are becoming more and more apparent. If you add rates to that,

who's coming here? Nobody. I'm just shocked that the Canadian dollar is maintaining its value it's holding it around for now yeah for now for like i suspect cut but when the cut comes you know like that's when it's over uh but if they all cut at the same time if it's all done you know even steven so to speak then it's still going to maintain it's just the one thing i you know the dollar milkshake theory is going to take into effect so eventually it's going to impact the canadian dollar just because of the

you know people have the relative perception of strength of the united states dollar but last story i'm just going to touch on it really really briefly we don't have much time i just want to say it cp24 article says that one way to decrease temporary residents is to make them permanent. Oh my God, Len. It says that one way Canada plans to shrink the number of temporary residents is to offer them the opportunity to remain permanently. And this is what immigration minister Mark Miller said,

but he also says it doesn't mean that everybody who wants to stay will be able to. So it looks like they're going to be selectively choosing who it is they want to keep in canada on a permanent basis and this is all you know if you look at the housing situation and other services they were impacted with the increase in uh temporary residents in canada miller says in fact the people already here their impact on affordability has already been baked in so it's smart to convert them over to permanent residence rather than keep them as temporary so yeah he does say that it doesn't mean by extension everybody entitled to stay here will be staying here in canada and also

miller said that they have announced plans to scale back the number of international students by putting a two-year cap on new admissions. This was back in January. So yeah, so there's a lot of moving parts here. Interesting things. Conestoga is probably going to be impacted negatively as a result of all this, but Hey yeah.

Interesting stuff. I don't have anything to say about it. Oh, good show tonight. That's where we'll wrap it up, I guess. Yeah, I think so. I think it's thanks for coming about it. Oh, good show tonight. That's where we'll wrap it up, I guess. Yeah, I think so. Thanks for coming.

Yeah, thanks for coming. I'll see some of you guys on Thursday or Friday. Well, no, I had a CP24 article. I thought it was an interesting article to read. The quote was nothing more permanent than a temporary program. It's actually nothing more permanent than a temporary resident. I fucking got that quote wrong for all these years i guess because it's ever evolving quotes too uh lots of lots of lots of blue sky above that anyway good night everybody we'll talk to you soon

and don't be a don't forget everybody lots of other stuff on cbp media network including two whites in the 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 in the blue anywhere you get your podcasts we look forward to seeing you