Good morning, dear subscribers! Before beginning today’s letter, I wanted to talk shop for a second. This letter is popular and growing daily. We have 5500 subscribers, with more every day.
With that, we have one goal this year. It’s to get 10,000 subscribers, both free and paid. If we get past 8000, that would be absolutely amazing. That would put this little newsletter in the top 1 percent of all newsletters, and I think we can do it. But only with your help! In order to do this, we will need people to be sharing this letter and showing people what it’s like.
We have two goals with this newsletter:
Inform the people of what’s happening! There is WAY too much going on all the time. No-one should be required to know everything. Thus, we compile all the news we can and give you a ~2000 word letter that runs through all the major headlines so that you can stay informed by paying attention once per week.
To write history. By reading this letter, you are become a(n) historian as well. This newsletter is a permanent historiography of the news. I’ve been running it for more than a year now, in various forms, so we have a record of all the major news from every week. With the advent of AI and the way algorithms work, it’s hard to remember what happened, since there’s always something new. But if we can go backwards, we can understand today’s news much more profoundly than if we just look at the headlines. Thus, my eternal goal of documenting history as a resource for all eternity.
We love stories, and it takes about 20 hours a week to write this letter. We have a ton of financial supporters who keep the lights on and pay for me to have the freedom to go get assaulted by the police on a Wednesday evening (this is a joke, I really would like this to stop happening. This is the third time this year that I have been assaulted, and I believe it is the fifth or sixth from William, though this time he was concussed and hospitalized.) But there are many people who can’t afford to pay as much. That’s why we have a $3 tier available! But if you can’t afford to pay, no stress. Help us grow the newsletter! Share it, and help us become a force to counter mainstream narratives, and get to more profound truths. We’re a different option for people tired of the buttoned up, super strict rules of traditional journalism. So– help us grow, and thanks for tolerating me!
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CARNEY HOLDS INVESTOR SUMMIT
You already know this story. It’s impossible not to. It’s been the dominating headline for a couple months. I wrote about it this Saturday in a report that’s free to the public. This is an important moment for Canada, with a renewed push towards privatization occurring within the Liberal government.
The Carney government, for their part, is looking to have $1 trillion in investments in Canada. That huge influx in cash would have a few effects. It’s important that we don’t fall prey to hysteria, since that’s easy to do. As historians we must look at this in the context of today, and what it could mean for the future.
Carney is correct that this will create jobs. The longevity of these jobs and the fairness of these jobs are what we need to be concerned about. Carney is attempting to re-industrialize Canada. The way he’s going about this will have some big consequences.
$1 trillion in investments in infrastructure projects will grow the job market. But for how long? The Quebec Liberals under Robert Bourassa made 100,000 jobs in their short time as provincial government. It worked! And then a lot of people ran out of jobs because the mega-construction projects ended. Ronald Reagan famously supercharged the American economy during a recession! And then it caused another recession in 1990. The Carney government is doing something new. Carney is attempting a reinvention of Keynesianism. Reindustrialization might not be a long-term solution, since we aren’t a manufacturing hub like China. We make some raw ingredients, but we don’t make a lot of products.
By having state investment in projects all over, but without a majority shares in anything, Carney seems to be building a new model for state governments to follow. He was the vice-chair at Brookfield Management, a massive investment fund. He is approaching Canada in a similar way. Carney is diversifying the Canadian investment portfolio. He is investing money in all of these infrastructure projects across the country. He started a sovereign wealth fund to do it, wants to remove state control of major airports while keeping ownership of the land and assets, and then wants to reinvest in a broader number of assets across Canada to weather greater storms and have fewer ups and downs in Canada’s economy. Nora Loreto and I were recently discussing this, and then she hopped on The North State and talked about this in depth. You should listen to the discussion.
It’s an interesting approach, and one that hasn’t been tried. Is it good? I’m not sure it is.
It might keep our treasury full, but it also makes the state beholden to investors, which is not the point of the state. The state is able to definancialize industries, and thus run it without the profit motive. The perfect example is obviously health care. This is an inelastic market, and therefore if there’s a profit motive, it can only cause prices to rise and cause long term problems. Thus, Carney’s gamble seems like the wrong one to me. It seems to believe that, by mastering the profit motive and participating in it fully, it can maintain its wealth. I wonder what the purpose of that is as well. Is the goal to maintain wealth to continue providing services? Or is it to serve the upper crust of society?
They also announced a new tax scheme, but it will only apply to new investments. 6.4 percent on new investments, down from 13. Having such a low tax rate on new businesses is a clever move. Again, the Liberals are betting on a mass influx of capital, which will provide the state huge sums of money. If $1 trillion is invested, all of it will be taxed 6.4 percent and bring the state 64 billion dollars and then there will be new income to tax continuously. It’s a bit ridiculous, though, since we already had a lower rate than the USA, and this is essentially a handout to billionaires who already wanted to invest in Canada. This is a win-win for them, and the Canadian state probably didn’t need to do this. This is the result of their lobbying efforts and established relationships with Carney.
We’ll see. If you want further analysis, check out Saturday’s report. This could take years before we know the consequences of Carney’s new approach.
QUEBEC ELECTION REMAINS DULL
It’s in the headline. There were two debates last week, with a third this Wednesday. Paul Saint-Pierre Plamondon (PSPP) won in a subtle way. Frechette seems to have fallen off a bit in some polls, although as of writing only a couple have come out.
PQ seems set to win the election. A plurality, certainly, although the other parties don’t have much room to breathe. 2 percentage points could mean that the CAQ gets no seats or 18 seats. Eric Grenier’s seat average has an insane range.
The debates were not exciting to watch. We saw three moderate conservatives debate on the stage, and so the competition wasn’t one of ideas, but of style and poise. PSPP played his cards right. He needed to show that he looked “prime ministerial,” and so he was calm, intelligent, and agreeable. Milliard walked out looking similar, but Frechette lost a lot of ground. She struggled to maintain her composure during the election, and had few responses to the record of the CAQ. It’s hard to defend yourself when your government has had such an infamously poor record.
She took a gamble at the top of the second debate as well, telling everyone that “she is not Legault,” but it seemed to be a hail-Mary move. She knew she was on her back foot, and the electors didn’t appreciate it. But after this bad turnout, she got fact checked by Radio-Canada, saying that she lied about how many teachers the CAQ hired. And not by a small amount either. Fifty thousand teachers short is a lot. Things just keep getting worse for Frechette!
Meanwhile the only left-wing party had an okay showing, but Ghazal needs to embrace the fact that she’s the only left-winger on that stage. Watch this clip. When you see the QS deputy speak, it’s aggressive but inspiring. It’s possibly the best clip of the entire election so far. Ghazal needs to be more like that. She’s stuck in this desire to be polite and professional, but she shouldn’t be. QS is the only one talking about maintaining the state that the rest of the leaders benefitted from. Call them out. Attack constantly. The people who are going to dismiss her for being too aggressive are already going to do that. Who cares? She’s the only one on the stage with a credible plan for the state. If Ghazal is strong on Wednesday, she could easily win some new voters.
TOP ENVIRONMENTAL NEWS
Canada is missing it’s 2030 target… but not just that, our goals of carbon neutral are essentially impossible.
AI slowdown plan doesn’t go far enough, experts say.
Australian gas company, Santos becomes fifth gas importer to sign contract with Ksi-Lisims.
Ontario cities responding differently to data centres.
Climate feedback loop could worsen global warming by as much as 30 percent.
Quebec walks away from using anesthetic gas with climate consequences.
Ecological conditions around nuclear power in question 2 years after freak fish event.
Coral reefs unable to recover because of consecutive heat waves.
TOP NEWS
Ed Sheeran is in hot water because he dropped Macklemore from his tour over his pro-palestine activism. It’s been amazing to watch.
Canada to become the newest member… no I’m kidding, we won’t be. Lots of people reacting about the EU and Canada working together, maybe because the President of the EU saying that she wants Canada to be an “associate member”. We’re just working with them on some projects with further discussions of closer ties ongoing. Calm down everyone! Carney claims that we’re not “fair weather friends.” Yeah, we’ll find out if that’s true, if the AfD and RN get into power.
Conservatives a “fractured mess”.
19 killed in Gaza because housing collapsed on them.
Left wing wins in Sweden. Not by much though.
UN finds grounds to believe that US committed war crimes in Iran strikes on school. Trump reacted exactly as expected.
Tamara Lich’s request to travel internationally denied. She was a leader and organizer with the 2022 convoy protests.
BC might enter snap election. Conservative leader quits. Everything is pure chaos out west.
Trump bans CNN, Politico, and MS NOW from white house. They’re suing.
See you soon.