Think Canada's job market is bad now? You ain't seen nothing yet

One million people or 5% of employed Canadians are now out of work — and that’s just two weeks of data

It is perhaps an understatement to call the unemployment picture across Canada grim.

Roughly five per cent of the Canadian labour force, or one million people, are now out of work because of COVID-19. A further 10 per cent worked less than half of their usual hours, none in some cases, despite technically remaining employed. In Toronto — which has experienced an unprecedented employment boom over the past five years — at least 25 per cent of all jobs have now been wiped out.

But the most remarkable thing about these statistics is that they represent just two weeks worth of data showing the devastation COVID-19 has wrought on the employment landscape. The situation can get markedly worse, and likely will.

GOLDSTEIN: Big government failed in COVID-19 pandemic

It has been suggested that the big government failed in the COVID-19 pandemic, and contrary to myth, Canada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic has not been an argument in favor of the big government, but a savage accusation.

Certainly, the massive amounts of public spending undertaken by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that will be paid by future generations to deal with the health and economic consequences of COVID-19 do not demonstrate the value of big government and massive bureaucracies. That being so, it demonstrates the enormous price Canadians are paying for the failure of the big government to do its most fundamental job of protecting Canadians’ health and well-being.

More explicitly and in simpler words, it could be said that thousands of Canadians could have been saved from death and tens of thousands would have been saved from infection if Canadian governments of all kinds had done their job competently in recent years. Two decades. Even so, there are many who excuse themselves expressing that “nobody could have seen COVID-19 coming”, which could be established as a really absurd response.

Canada was not ready for another pandemic

David Rosenberg: The Great Canadian Debt Surge has come home to roost

Canada could be facing a credit downgrade soon because of the massive federal assistance needed in the coronavirus pandemic.

Somehow Ottawa has to shoulder a good chunk of these liabilities

There is a very good chance that the need for more massive federal assistance for the provinces, households and the business sector will trigger a downgrade in Canada’s credit at some point soon.

It may be true that the federal government went into this mess with a seemingly well contained debt-to-GDP ratio of 31 per cent, but for the entire economy, at all public and private sector levels, that ratio is an unprecedented 350 per cent. Canada in aggregate doesn’t have a AAA-rated balance sheet to begin with and now Ottawa has to somehow shoulder a good chunk of these liabilities.

In the end, it doesn’t matter what the rating agencies do, as we saw with the inconsequential U.S. debt downgrade in the summer of 2011. It has to be remembered that prior to 2002, the Canadian federal government was frequently rated as an AA- credit by at least one of the major agencies. I’m not sure anyone cared or even noticed … as much as it may be a source of national pride.

COVID-19 reaches peak in Ontario and elsewhere in the country, with fewer people dying than feared

According to provincial health officials, the COVID-19 pandemic appears to have peaked in Ontario, several weeks ahead of earlier forecasts, and hospitals have largely escaped the dreaded increase in critically ill patients.

Likewise, it is necessary to indicate that Canada could go through the worst of the pandemic in late April. While growth rates are slowing across the country. In fact, new modeling data was released Monday in Ontario, one of the worst affected provinces. Whereas previously, terrifying models predicted a spike in cases in May, shelters in place and other public health orders “have accelerated the spike thus far.”

Provincial officials stressed that it does not mean that the disease has “passed.” Without a vaccine, the pandemic virus is expected to circulate for a year or more.

Efforts that must be duplicated to stop the spread of COVID-19

Canada Needs To Return To The Gold Standard

A 1oz Canadian Maple Leaf Gold Coin, dated 2020. Royal Canadian Mint.

There is no doubt that the continued collapse of the global economic system has revealed a multitude of systemic flaws that are present in the way business is conducted. Consequently, it has been indicated that reform is desperately needed for Canada to recover and grow in the future. That being so, it has been said that the country certainly needs to return to the gold standard, and this is something that every Canadian need to hear.

Now, when mentioning it, it is necessary to answer the following question, What is the gold standard? In this way, it is understood that it is not something that many were alive back then to see, so it is understandable if it does not have the same resonance in the public consciousness as Brian Mulroney or Pierre Trudeau. Simply put, gold supports the value of the coin under a standard gold system. A country sets the price of gold and buys and sells gold at that price. Countries that trade with each other will settle their accounts by transferring gold.

A pattern that goes back a long time

The death of the department store: ‘Very few are likely to survive’

American department stores, once all-powerful shopping meccas that anchored malls and Main Streets across the country, have been dealt blow after blow in the past decade. J.C. Penney and Sears were upended by hedge funds. Macy’s has been closing stores and cutting corporate staff. Barneys New York filed for bankruptcy last year.

But nothing compares to the shock the weakened industry has taken from the coronavirus pandemic. The sales of clothing and accessories fell by more than half in March, a trend that is expected to only get worse in April. The entire executive team at Lord & Taylor was let go this month. Nordstrom has canceled orders and put off paying its vendors. The Neiman Marcus Group, the most glittering of the American department store chains, is expected to declare bankruptcy in the coming days, the first major retailer felled during the current crisis.

It is not likely to be the last.

“The department stores, which have been failing slowly for a very long time, really don’t get over this,” said Mark A. Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University’s Business School. “The genre is toast and looking at the other side of this, there are very few who are likely to survive.”

These Are the Drugs and Vaccines That Might End the Coronavirus Pandemic

STEPH DAVIDSON/GETTY

COVID-19 (an acronym for Coronavirus Disease 2019), also known as Coronavirus Disease, incorrectly, as Coronavirus Pneumonia, is an infectious disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It was first detected in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December 2019. Having reached more than 100 territories, the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic on March 11, 2020.

Now, it is necessary to talk about possible solutions to attack COVID-19 and possibly end it. Notably, almost all clinical trials are in the early stages, and it could take weeks or months to get answers about what works.

Certainly more than 200 different programs have been launched to develop vaccines and therapies to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. From well-known industry giants like Gilead Sciences Inc. to Johnson & Johnson, they participate in a worldwide race to find and test products. With a more than likely vaccine out of reach for this year, the short-term hope for a means to stifle the global spread of the new coronavirus is based on finding an antiviral treatment that can improve the odds of survival for those affected. with Covid-19.

Alternatives that could end COVID-19

New Michael Moore-Backed Documentary On YouTube Reveals Massive Ecological Impacts Of Renewables

Michael Moore produced "Planet of the Humans" about the eco-impacts of renewables GETTY EDITORIAL AND JEFF GIBBS, PLANET OF THE HUMANS

Over the last 10 years, everyone from celebrity influencers including Elon Musk, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Al Gore, to major technology brands including Apple, have repeatedly claimed that renewables like solar panels and wind farms are less polluting than fossil fuels.

But a new documentary, “Planet of the Humans,” being released free to the public on YouTube today, the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, reveals that industrial wind farms, solar farms, biomass, and biofuels are wrecking natural environments.

“Planet of the Humans was produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore. “I assumed solar panels would last forever,” Moore told Reuters. “I didn’t know what went into the making of them.”

The film shows both abandoned industrial wind and solar farms and new ones being built — but after cutting down forests. “It suddenly dawned on me what we were looking at was a solar dead zone,” says filmmaker Jeff Gibbs, staring at a former solar farm in California. “I learned that the solar panels don’t last.”

Ambler, Kronick - Why Canadian Quantitative Easing Needs Transparency

Importantly, there is currently a question that certainly needs to be considered and not neglected, which is, why does Canadian quantitative easing need transparency?

And it is that, for the first time in its history, with the night rate reaching its effective lower limit of 0.25 percent, the Bank of Canada has embarked on the path of quantitative easing (QE). This clearly implies the direct purchase of financial assets by the bank, which reduces its returns. QE was used by the Federal Reserve Bank and other central banks during the financial crisis, although the Bank of Canada avoided having to use it.

Despite this, currently, with less room to reduce the interest rate overnight, the Bank was forced to quickly resort to unconventional monetary policy. Transparency on what assets will be purchased and on the Bank’s strategy to control inflation will be essential for the success of this operation.

Implications for the bank’s balance sheet in addition to inflation

Marni Soupcoff: Don't make free speech the next COVID-19 victim in Canada

Need to point out, the Canadian government could be using its power to secure personal protective equipment for healthcare workers, facilitate increased testing capacity, and eliminate regulatory red tape that gets in the way of efficient investigation of vaccines. It is certainly understood that these steps could be helpful, and they are just three examples out of many. Referring to this, one may question why federal politicians use their time to make plans to censor the online expression of a pandemic that could use more creative ideas.

It certainly sounds great to crack down on dangerous “cranks” that push “disinformation.” This is so until it is discovered that a couple of months ago, anyone suggesting COVID-19 could and would spread via community broadcast here, an idea that Canadian public health leaders scoffed at, would have been considered like a “hobby”. And it’s just a couple of weeks ago, anyone who claimed that wearing a mask in public was helpful in stopping the spread of COVID-19 would also have been considered a fool by federal standards.

Pandemic that uncontrollable

Silver Report: Silver Outlook is Bullish

It is no secret to anyone that the silver market is in the midst of several changing trends as the COVID-19 pandemic turns the global economy around. And is that when the dust stabilizes, we see a bullish case for silver prices, since investment demand increases while supply restrictions persist.

Certainly silver entered 2020 with a constructive perspective. As the world economy showed signs of slowing down and debt levels continued to rise globally, central banks began to activate liquidity touches through interest rate cuts and various types of bond purchase programs. Silver recovered near $ 19 / oz in late February until the pandemic spread beyond China, causing silver to take a hit and drop to a low of $ 12 / oz in mid-March, but from so it has recovered to about $ 16 / oz.

It has been noted that on a year-to-date basis, silver lags behind gold with a 13% decrease versus a 13% gold increase.

Bullish potential in sight

Rex Murphy on COVID-19: The power to censor speech and other great ideas from our Liberal overlords

It could be said that if there is something positive about this terrible plague that we are enduring, it is that from time to time, it gives the Trudeau government some really cool ideas.

Certainly, just a couple of weeks ago, the liberals came up with the idea that they should give themselves the power to tax and spend for the next two years, without having to get parliamentary approval. It was a really brilliant idea, except that it ignored the fact that approving government spending is one of Parliament’s most important functions.

Now, it is necessary to indicate that this government is openly thinking of becoming the official censor of what can and cannot be said about COVID-19.

The truth that does not come to light

‘The Fed can’t print gold’: How the yellow metal could hit $3,000 — 50% above the current record

Bank of America’s bullish call on bullion

Bank of America Corp. raised its 18-month gold-price target to US$3,000 an ounce — more than 50 per cent above the existing price record — in a report titled “The Fed can’t print gold.”

The bank increased its target from US$2,000 previously, as policy makers across the globe unleash vast amounts of fiscal and monetary stimulus to help shore up economies hurt by the coronavirus.

“As economic output contracts sharply, fiscal outlays surge, and central bank balance sheets double, fiat currencies could come under pressure,” analysts including Michael Widmer and Francisco Blanch said in the report. “Investors will aim for gold.”

Jack M. Mintz: All this debt won’t be painless

The IMF predicts that Canada will be the second biggest budget-buster of all advanced countries. Justin Tang/The Canadian Press

Countries with highly leveraged households, corporations and public sectors will face financial instability as credit spreads widen and currencies devalue

The pandemic-induced recession is busting public budgets throughout the world, both to fight the virus and to satisfy unprecedented demands for fiscal and liquidity measures. According to the latest IMF Fiscal Monitor, the fiscal and liquidity support that has been provided already exceeds what was done in the 2008 financial crisis. As of April 8, fiscal and liquidity measures add up to US$3.3 trillion and US$4.5 trillion, respectively, which sums to roughly nine per cent of world GDP. The most common spending measures have been transfers to firms, wage subsidies, unemployment benefits and direct income support for households. Typical revenue measures include tax and social security deferrals and tax relief.

The IMF predicts that Canada will be the second biggest budget-buster of all advanced countries. Our general government fiscal deficit is expected to be 11.8 per cent of GDP, surpassed only by the United States. Only oil-rich Norway is expected to run a fiscal surplus in 2020, though that will be down from its healthy surpluses of earlier years.

Peter Schiff: Nobody Should Be Bailed Out

Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya made waves when he said during a CNBC interview that the government should not bail out companies impacted by the coronavirus shutdowns. “On Main Street today, people are getting wiped out. Right now, rich CEOs are not, boards that have horrible governance are not,” he said. “What we’ve done is disproportionately prop up poor-performing CEOs and boards, and you have to wash these people out.”

During an interview on RT, Peter Schiff said he’s been saying the same thing since day one.

You know, the real beneficiaries of the bankruptcies are not the employees of the company. I mean, they will benefit, although some of these companies in a restructured bankruptcy will end up shedding some of their workers, which is a good thing, because many of these companies have too many workers, and in order to survive, they need to be more competitive, especially if demand is down in their industries. But the big winners in bankruptcies are the customers.”

Horowitz: We don’t need another bailout; we need to reopen

Wikimedia Commons

Why even have a Republican Party when, with control of two of the three branches of the political process, Republicans can’t provide any vision or contrast in the worst crisis of our lifetime?

Once again, Republicans are falling into a trap of getting into a bidding war with Democrats on how much money to spend to treat a self-imposed problem without addressing the cause of the problem.

Here’s the simple truth: If Republicans push to end the shutdown, curtail the unconstitutional actions of governors, suspend taxation and regulations for several years, and get the economy moving, they won’t need more bailout bills. If, on the other hand, they continue the shutdown and won’t address the other issues related to the cause and solution for the China virus, sovereignty, regulations, and supply chains, no amount of Monopoly money they print can cover destroying most small businesses in America.

Bruce Pardy: Let's not double down on the nanny state

In our traumatic national condition, our government just wants to get bigger, to have its hand in everything.

For prosperity, the invisible hand works better than an iron (or any other kind of) fist

Hard times make strong people, the saying goes, but it didn’t work out that way for the Brits. Victorious but beaten to within a hair of its life from six years of war with Hitler, the U.K. opted for socialism. In a landslide election following victory in Europe in 1945, voters threw out Winston Churchill in favour of Labour leader Clement Attlee, who proceeded to create the British welfare state. After sacrificing everything to protect their freedom, voters chose a government that promised to look after them. Except for the period under Margaret Thatcher, who tried to turn the ship around, the U.K. has been on the road to serfdom ever since.

What the Heck Happened to Oil?

The price of oil turned negative on Monday for the first time in history.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that somebody will soon pay you to put gas in your car. We’re talking about the price of oil futures contracts. Nevertheless, it does indicate just how out of whack the oil market has become.

In a nutshell, there is too much supply and demand has plummeted with everybody at home watching Netflix. Meanwhile, storage capacity is maxed out.

An oil future contract is a promise to deliver a certain amount of oil at a certain price. Speculators play this market, hoping to profit from a price swing. Say you buy a $25 per barrel contract and the price of oil rises to $30. The investor can sell the contract and make a few dollars per barrel. That’s why the oil futures turned negative. May futures contracts expire Tuesday. That means holders of those contracts have to take delivery of the crude or roll it into a future contract. With no place to store the oil, nobody wanted to be left holding the bag. Traders were literally paying people to take the contracts off their hands.

Why oil prices just crashed into negative territory — 4 things investors need to know

Oil did something Monday that made even market veterans shake their heads in wonder — the thinly traded, soon-to-expire May contract for West Texas Intermediate crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange traded, and closed, in negative territory.

“I’m not sure how to react to that other than say that nobody, whether they’re 120 years old or whether they’re 20 months old, has ever seen an oil price lower than this,” Tom Kloza, a 40-year market veteran and head of global market analysis for Oil Price Information Service, told MarketWatch just minutes before the market closed.

Negative prices means someone with a long position in oil would have to pay someone to take that oil off of their hands. Why would they do that? The main reason is a fear that if forced to take delivery of crude on the expiration of the May oil contract, there would be nowhere to put it as a glut of crude fills up available storage.

Joe Oliver: A primal policy battle is coming and Canada's future is at stake

The hike in the carbon tax and the raise in MPs' salaries the Liberal minority government let sail through, even as it was shuttering the economy, demonstrate both its mindset and tin ear. David Kawai/Bloomberg

Government policies need to encourage capital investment, aim for fiscal balance and liberate the private sector from uncompetitive taxes and red tape

At this moment of national peril, those with an ideological agenda are plotting the permanent expansion of government at the expense of personal freedom and economic opportunity. Some are questioning the value of globalization. The usual suspects are advocating the demise of the energy industry. These dystopian ideas are likely to be the followup to the government’s colossal stimulus and aid program.

We are experiencing the Mother of All Crises because the combination of momentous events has no historical parallel — the global scope and impact of the pandemic, the shuttering of economies by government edict, an oil price collapse and unprecedented fiscal and monetary intervention. Maybe that is why conventional wisdom’s conclusion seems to be that everything will change forever. If we are not careful, that could become a self-fulfilling prophesy. Some things must change, including our lack of national self-sufficiency of essential goods and services in an emergency, our vulnerability to China, organized hostility to our vital natural resource industry, and our fiscal extravagance. But other things should not change, most notably the market economy, which has dramatically raised the standard of living for billions of people around the world.

Historic day for oil markets as WTI crude closes below zero for first time

Of all the wild, unprecedented swings in financial markets since the coronavirus pandemic broke out, none has been more jaw-dropping than this collapse

NEW YORK — U.S. crude oil futures turned negative on Monday for the first time in history, ending the day at a stunning minus US$37.63 a barrel as traders sold heavily because of rapidly filling storage space at the key Cushing, Oklahoma, delivery point.

Brent crude, the international benchmark, also slumped, but that contract was nowhere near as weak because more storage is available worldwide.

The May U.S. WTI contract fell US$55.9, or 306 per cent, to settle at a discount of US$37.63 a barrel after touching an all-time low of -US$40.32 a barrel. Brent was down US$2.51, or 9 per cent, to settle at US$25.57 a barrel.

Oil price goes into negative territory as traders get squeezed running for the exits

Oil from Canada's oilsands typically trades at a discount to the U.S. oil price at the best of times, and the latter dropped to minus $37.63. (Jeff McIntosh/The Canadian Press)

OPEC deal to cut production fails to offset even greater plunge in demand for fuel

Oil prices plunged on Monday as traders got caught in a desperate race to offload contracts for just about any price they could get.

The price of a contract to deliver West Texas Intermediate crude oil next month plunged below zero, as traders got caught in flurry to sell their contracts before having to actually receive the oil.

The oil price is determined through investments known as futures contracts, which are agreements to buy and sell a certain amount of oil at a certain time in the future. The contract to deliver oil in May has been the most commonly traded contract of late, so it is currently considered to be the best proxy for the current oil price. Soon June’s contract will be the benchmark.

Sweden Says Controversial Virus Strategy Proving Effective

Sweden’s unusual approach to fighting the coronavirus pandemic is starting to yield results, according to the country’s top epidemiologist.

Anders Tegnell, the architect behind Sweden’s relatively relaxed response to Covid-19, told local media the latest figures on infection rates and fatalities indicate the situation is starting to stabilize.

“We’re on a sort of plateau,” Tegnell told Swedish news agency TT.

A Legacy and Family in Action

Link to the original story by Kim McDermott ’87 

Army Hockey Head coach Brian Riley wears two steel bracelets, one on each wrist. They bear the names of two graduates who have left an indelible mark on Riley. Leaving legacies to the program, and to the nation, were Major Thomas Kennedy ’00 and First Lieutenant Derek Hines ’03. Both officers were killed in action in Afghanistan; Hines on September 1, 2005 and Kennedy on August 8, 2012. The mention of their names clearly touches a nerve and sets off a passionate response that Riley has repeated many times over. He says, “I would go to the top of any mountain to talk about them.”

“One of the most important jobs I have is to make sure the legacies of our former players live on. I wear these bracelets in honor of that and I will never take them off. These guys were my guys. They were obviously good hockey players, but more importantly they were great people, young men and great leaders.” Riley does all he can to make sure his current players understand who they were, holding them up as models to emulate. Cadet Trevin Kozlowski ’21 says, “I can only hope to try and accomplish some of the great things that these great men have done.”

We’re Not Going Back to Normal

Turn the key and the economy will restart.

That’s a myth a lot of people in the mainstream have peddled since governments started shutting down the economy in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

That’s not going to happen. We’re not going back to normal.

In fact, things weren’t “normal” before the pandemic.

As Peter Schiff has been saying, too many mainstream pundits and prognosticators have focused exclusively on the pin and ignored the economic bubble that it popped. They argue that since the economic damage due to the COVID-19 shutdowns was self-inflicted, it’s not a real recession. It’s not a real economic collapse. It’s not that businesses are closing because the economy is bad. We just decided to shut them down. Therefore, we can just decide to open everything back up and everything will be fine. But as Schiff said, it’s not that simple.

Bank of Canada unleashes billions to aid economy in what will likely be most severe recession ever

Central bank holds rate and will start buying up to $50 billion in provincial debt, and up to $10 billion of corporate bonds

The International Monetary Fund earlier this week observed that forecasting accurately during the coronavirus crisis is an extremely uncertain undertaking, but it still published an outlook that said the “Great Lockdown” will cause global GDP to contract by three per cent this year, the deepest since the Great Depression, followed by growth of 5.8 per cent in 2021.

The Bank of Canada faced the same near-impossible situation and decided not to bother. Instead, on April 15, it replaced its customary baseline projection with a “scenario analysis” of plausible outcomes that depend on how long it takes authorities to get COVID-19 outbreaks under control.

Once Safer Than Gold, Canadian Real Estate Braces for Reckoning

Apartment buildings in the skyline of Vancouver. Photographer: Jennifer Gauthier/Bloomberg

Canadian housing once seemed so infallible that the head of the world’s biggest asset manager in 2015 described Vancouver condos as a better store of wealth than gold.

The coronavirus is putting that theory to the test.

While lockdowns, job losses and uncertainty are roiling property markets from the U.K. to Australia to Hong Kong, Canada’s situation is more precarious than most. As its oil sector shriveled in recent years, Canada’s economy became ever more driven by real estate, an industry now in a state of paralysis. Nearly one in three workers has applied for income support.

What’s more, its households are among the world’s most indebted, poorly placed to weather the storm.

Terence Corcoran: Why all the macroprudes failed on COVID-19

In 2017, Mark Carney, then Bank of England governor and head of the FSB, highlighted climate change as a new risk to the global financial system.Peter Summers/Pool via Reuters files

Global policy-makers shoved pandemic risk aside and spread climate alarm instead

One of the noble houses of global macroprudentialism, the International Monetary Fund, declared Tuesday that “The Great Lockdown” will plunge the global economy into the “worst recession since the Great Depression, surpassing that seen during the global financial crisis a decade ago.” Along with the rest of the world’s economic overseers and protectors of financial stability, the IMF seems to have been unprepared for — and overwhelmed by — the arrival of COVID-19.

That the IMF was blindsided is clear in the opening words of Tuesday’s World Economic Outlook. “The world has changed dramatically in the three months since our last World Economic Outlook update on the global economy. A pandemic scenario had been raised as a possibility in previous economic policy discussions, but none of us had a meaningful sense of what it would look like on the ground and what it would mean for the economy.”

Bank of Canada holds rate steady at 0.25% and hints it has no plans to go any lower

Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz says the COVID-19 pandemic has hit Canada's economy hard. (Blair Gable/Reuters)

Bank expects economic activity to slow by as much as 30% from end of 2019

After cutting it three times in barely a month, the Bank of Canada kept its benchmark interest rate steady at 0.25 per cent on Wednesday, despite an economic outlook that’s looking more and more like one of the bleakest ones we’ve ever seen.

The central bank said in a release that it considers the current level of its rate to be its “effective lower bound.” That means the bank doesn’t have any plans to cut the rate to zero or into negative territory, despite the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic that has devastated Canada’s economy.

The bank says it expects widespread lockdowns, layoffs and other drastic measures will have a dramatic impact on Canada’s economy in the months ahead. The bank says it thinks economic activity in the period between April and June will be between 15 and 30 per cent lower than it was at the end of 2019.

Money Is Losing Its Meaning

What is money?  Photographer: Bloomberg

Doing “whatever it takes” to save the global economy from the coronavirus pandemic is going to cost a lot of money. The U.S. government alone is spending a few trillion dollars, and the Federal Reserve is creating another few trillion dollars to keep the financial system from collapsing. A custom Bloomberg index measuring M2 figures for 12 major economies including the U.S., China, euro zone and Japan shows their aggregate money supply had already more than doubled to $80 trillion from before the 2008–2009 financial crisis.

These numbers are so large that they no longer have any meaning; they are simply abstractions. It’s been some time since people thought about the concept of money and its purpose. The broad idea is that money has value, but that value is not arbitrary. Former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker once said in an interview that “it is a governmental responsibility to maintain the value of the currency they issue. And when they fail to do that, it is something that undermines an essential trust in government.”

How COVID-19 could force changes to family courts, modernize access to the justice system

With the courts snarled by delays connected with COVID-19 containment efforts, traditional family law processes may be forced to change. (Cliff MacArthur/provincialcourt.bc.ca)

Physical distancing and isolation measures may force family court system to change for the better

With courts closed across the country, separated and divorced couples are facing the prospect of not having access to a judge for what could be months.

The courts have made exceptions for urgent cases, but these are mostly limited to child abductions, restraining orders and child abuse cases. That means child and spousal support claims, hearings regarding access and custody of children, and claims for the sale and division of matrimonial property will likely not get any court time until alternative processes are created.

As a result, some are worried about trials that may be delayed into next year. This not only increases the legal costs, it also leaves families with no court resolution on pressing issues, like child and spousal support, and parenting schedules that are not considered urgent by the courts at this time.

Cracks form as governments face pressure from global debt burdens: Don Pittis

Countries that don't have Canada’s economic resources to make it through what the International Monetary Fund calls the Great Lockdown will need financial help from wealthier countries to maintain social stability, economists tell CBC News. (Zohra Bensemra/Reuters)

Without support from the richest economies, some of the world’s poorest could face catastrophe, experts warn

Even as millions of Canadians look to Ottawa for support through the COVID-19 lockdown, there are growing concerns that chaos in the world’s most indebted regions will delay a global economic recovery.

Reports of a breakdown in civil control in places such as Iraq, following the loss of oil revenues, may be an early indicator of wider economic and political fallout.

“Fears are growing that the state will collapse,” an Iraqi official told The Economist magazine in a worrying report titled Dark times ahead: The risk that Iraq may fall apart.

Remember Alberta’s generosity, because it will need Canada’s help in the months ahead

A pumpjack works on an oil and gas installation near Cremona, Alta., in this file photo from Oct. 29, 2016. In the months ahead, Alberta will need Canada’s help, writes John Ibbitson. JEFF MCINTOSH/THE CANADIAN PRESS

This is the very best that we are: Because COVID-19 infections are below forecast levels in Alberta, the provincial government is donating ventilators and personal protective equipment to Ontario, Quebec and British Columbia.

“I, for one, as an Albertan and as a Canadian, could not in conscience watch us stockpile massive amounts of surplus equipment while we see many of our fellow Canadians, some provinces, within days of running out of some of these supplies,” Premier Jason Kenney said.

I, for one, as an Ontarian and as a Canadian, am deeply grateful.

All of us should keep this generosity in mind. We should remember as well that the wealth of the Alberta oil economy helped pull Canada out of the 2008–09 recession.

Because in the months ahead, it’s Alberta that will need Canada’s help.

"That is a surprise": Doctors still waiting for feared surge of COVID-19 patients in Canadian ICUs

A directions sign is seen at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada January 26, 2020.REUTERS/Carlos Osorio

Doctors have been preparing for the worst, a deluge of desperately ill COVID-19 patients who are overwhelming resources and making the necessary decisions about who receives life-saving care.

On the plane to it, many doctors, nurses, and other personnel who run the country’s intensive care units have also feared for their own safety, amid an indisputable shortage of protective equipment. However, it needs to be noted that some critical care physicians in the worst affected provinces say they have yet to deal with that dreaded increase in coronavirus patients.

An important fact to mention is that so far, at least, there are no floods and there are many beds available in the ICU.

The worst could be yet to come

Millennials are getting crushed by back-to-back economic crises

Economic downturns are inevitable, but they’re not usually so severe. And once-in-a-generation recessions don’t tend to occur just a decade apart

Aviv Russ feels like the cards have been stacked against his generation — and he’s not wrong.

Russ is a millennial, the infamous cohort of people born between 1981 and 1996. He graduated from Boston-based Emerson College in 2009, just as the Great Recession gutted the jobs market for years.

He spent his first few years after school fighting for low-paid work as a production assistant. His mentors told him, “‘Dude, you missed the good years by like five years,’” he said.

A decade later, just as he had built up savings and was preparing to buy a house, the 31-year-old is out of a job again. The coronavirus outbreak has dried up production gigs in Hollywood, where he works.

COVID-19: Federal deficit projected to reach $184B as economic response rolled out

The 2021 federal deficit is expected to reach $ 184 billion, or 8.5 percent of GDP, as Ottawa introduces new and expensive spending measures to combat the economic consequences of COVID-19.

The latest deficit projection, released by the Parliamentary Budget Officer on Thursday, is more than triple the previous deficit record set by former Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who ran a $ 56 billion gap in 2009 to fend off the recession. economic.

The updated forecast comes after Ottawa revealed plans for a $ 73 billion wage subsidy program for Canadian companies, an initiative that continued to face criticism Thursday for its delay in deployment. The growing budget deficit will push the federal debt-to-GDP ratio above 40 percent, according to the PBO, the highest in 20 years.

Fear and confusion