A 22 year old “man” from the Indian city of Haryana, decided that his parents birthday present of a brand new BMW 3 Series worth $50 to $60,000 in India was just not good enough. He wanted a $75,000 Jaguar so he recorded himself pushing the new BMW into the river and sent it to his father. According to the BBC and New York Times, the police then got involved and sent first responders because they did not know if…
The “Yield Curve” is nothing more than a line between the dots on a graph of interest rates. At the start of the graph (on the left) is very short term interest rates and at the end of the graph (on the right side) is longer term interest rates. When long term interest rates are lower than short term rates it means business is expected to DECREASE over time. When the graph trends down, it is called an “inverted yield…
‘One China’ is a policy by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) that requires other nations to accept that the CCP is rightfully in total control of both the Chinese mainland and the nearby island ‘nation’ of Taiwan. The history of how One China came to be is a fascinating one. Brief History of One China In the early 1900’s China was ruled by the Chinese Nationalist Party (the Kuomintang or KMT) but a civil war began in 1946, after years…
When China began the ‘free-marketization’ of its economy in the 1980’s it was clear that China was going to be an economic powerhouse. They had an excellent blue print to follow in capitalist British Hong Kong and a singular drive to raise its citizens from the poverty of its communist past. However, few had predicted back then that China would look so completely inward for growth as they are today. It is clear that while foreign markets like the United…
Canada has a pushy trading partner called China and that “partner” is throwing its weight around currently by: Removing China’s (nasty) ambassador to Canada “…Lu has made a series of damning remarks about Canada-China relations in recent months”… SOURCE . Arresting Canadians in China on what appears to be spurious grounds “…The retaliatory arrest of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor on spurious national security grounds… have brought Canada-China relations to their lowest ebb since the establishment of diplomatic relations…
The City of Toronto has the largest transit system in Canada that includes 2200 buses and they are now testing 10 fully electric units from each of New Flyer (Canada), BYD (China), and Proterra (US) Here are the numbers: 25% more reliable 30% few parts less items to inventory and manage saves money 25% lower maintenance costs 60% quieter which is a big deal for drivers and communities 75% reduction in energy costs $32,000 /bus /year energy savings $70 million…
It is oft said by those who disapprove of carbon taxes that: Carbon taxes are ineffective Carbon taxes target the wrong people The Canadian Federal Government does not have right to impose a carbon tax All three of these statements are demonstrably incorrect. University of Ottawa Professor of Law and Economics, Stewart Elgie, explains that the dissenting judges in the Saskatchewan and Ontario carbon tax cases are not disagreeing with the principle that the Federal Government has the right to…
There are many that think Huawei is just a puppet of the Chinese government and an equal number that think the Huawei bans and bad talk are nothing more than hype designed to stifle a non-Western competitor. We recently wrote two articles explaining some of Huawei’s background: 10 Short Answers To Why Huawei is so Scary To Western Countries Who Owns Huawei? A Fascinating Story but neither our previous articles nor the political hype have clearly explained why countries should…
People typically purchase stocks in a company for two reasons: to make money from an increase in stock price over time to make money from dividends However, there is a third way to make money with stocks… a very risky way called ‘short selling’. What is Short Selling Stocks In Simple Terms? A ‘short’ as it is called in the financial industry is a bet against a companies stock. To short a stock, you ‘borrow’ shares from someone with a…
UPDATED: July 21 2019 Since the start of the 2019, there have been many important events in the Trans Mountain Pipeline saga and it is easy to get lost. To clarify the issues we have appended the following entries to our master list “Complete Trans Mountain Pipeline and Expansion Timeline from 1947 to 2022” 2019 Jan 15 100 First Nations groups meet in Calgary to discuss purchase of Trans Mountain 2019 Jan 21 Trans Mountain submits report to NEB proposing…
The goal of a trade war is to increase access to some other countries markets. However, we can simplify the logic by reducing down from a country scale to an individual business scale. At the single company scale, Company A withholds a key product or increases price on that product because they want something from Company B, perhaps increased sales effort of some key line. At some point the cost becomes too much for one or both of the parties…
In her book “The Signals Are Talking” venture capitalist investor Amy Webb states as soon as she sees “The Amazon of…” she stops listening and moves to the next project. If you have ever watched Shark Tank or Dragons Den, you will know that those VC’s turn off as soon as the person pitching their concept explains that all they need is 1% of some insanely large global market, they tune out. It is a fools game to try and…
We recently flew with WestJet and had a VERY minor clerical problem with the tickets. To make a long story short (you can read the full story at the end of this article, if you want the details), WestJet told us they were unwilling to adjust our ticket even though there were dozens of open seats and the core problem was a WestJet issue. We were told that the new Basic fare: has resulted in received a high number of…
We just spent a few hours reading, skimming and searching through the Mueller report and found just two references to Canada or Canadians, both of which are completely innocuous. You may then ask why a negative outcome worth reporting and we respond that it is a question we have been asked to look into. We expected to at least be able to to say that the report was chock full of mysterious inferences about the Russia – Trump relationship but…
We have known Leela Sharon Aheer for a couple of decades but the last eight years with the Wildrose/UCP and 2019 Alberta election brought out some facts we’ll bet most people just don’t know about her: If you think Leela is a hard worker, you’d be wrong because ‘hard working’ is a massive understatement. She only sleeps a few hours per day and works constantly. She personally knocked on over 7000 doors in the riding of Chestermere-Strathmore and more than…
This op-ed piece is taking a short departure from our mandate of shedding light on facts and avoiding opinion. After the election, we had discussions thoughtful, educated people referring to the NDP as “crazy lefties”, “nutty greenies” and “anti-pipeline activists” all of which we think is inaccurate. Keep in mind that we are concerning ourselves with the Alberta NDP Party and not individuals. We believe there are two primary reasons the Alberta NDP Party is not “crazy left”, “nutty green”…