Yes, folks, it's Greta Thunberg, the incarnation of Pippi Longstocking. Or shall we say, the new Malala Yousufzai. Except that instead of preaching peace and love (and not all Muslims are evil), Miss Thunberg is raising her tiny little-girl voice to warn us that the sky is falling, so we should face up the climate emergency (which no-one doubts) and Go Green immediately. Or else! Check out this video, posted on Canada's Global TV website, of Miss Thunberg's recent visit (along with "fellow youth activists") to the Disunited Nations.
Did you ask yourself, "What's wrong with that girl?!" She's 16, as old or older than some of the young women accompanying her. Why does she dress like that? [Maybe her handlers... errr, parents... dress her. Ed.] Why does she talk like that? WTF is she trying to prove?
Maxime Bernier, leader of the People's Party of Canada, has answered those questions in an eight-part Tweetstorm about the "international mascot for climate alarmism". He calls her "mentally unstable" and says she is being used by the left as "a convenient shield". Direct quote from part 4/8: "@GretaThunberg is clearly mentally unstable. Not only autistic, but obsessive-compulsive, eating disorder, depression and lethargy, and she lives in a constant state of fear. She wants us to feel the same: 'I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I fear every day.'"
And from part 6/8: "My concern is not for @GretaThunberg’s feelings, but for the millions of Canadians and people in other countries who will be poorer, will suffer and have their lives upended if we let her and the movement she represents impose their radical ideas."
But WHY? From parts 1/8 through 3/8: "The goal of the green Left is to radically transform our society through hysterical fear that the end of the world is coming and we have no choice but to give up our freedoms and way of life. Their agenda is clear. Thunberg: 'We must change almost everything in our current society.'
"They want to make us poorer and restrict everything from housing, transportation, food, travel, and what we consume, to even having babies. They don’t care about democracy and say there is no time left for debate. Opposition or expression of doubt must be silenced. We must make those radical changes NOW."
Further reading: Click here to read all of M Bernier's 8 Tweets, posted on his Twitter account today, 2/9/19.
Some of the replies are worth noting. Challenging those who accused "Mad Max" of bullying an innocent child, Craig Tyler tweeted: "The only ones responsible for Greta’s current position are the people putting her there." Like who? Fingers are being pointed at... wait for it... (((George Soros))). Who else has the bucks to ferry her on a luxury yacht (solar- and wind-powered, of course) from Europe to New York? Well???
Further viewing (added 4/9/19): "'Facts don't matter' with global warming", with Sky News (Australia) host Andrew Bolt. Quote: "Global warming isn't a science. It's a religion!"
Showing posts with label activists. Show all posts
Showing posts with label activists. Show all posts
Monday, September 2, 2019
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Why the Dow and S&P keep rising and Canadian markets suck
Canadian readers who play the stock markets are painfully aware that their portfolios of Canuck stocks are not keeping up with inflation, whereas investments in Donald Trump's America keep going up and up. Before the bell this morning, the Dow stood at 26,430.57 while the TSX languished at 15,854.05, in spite of the frenzy for cannabis stocks and the generally good economic numbers coming out of the Great No-longer-white North.
Why is this? George Athanassakos, a professor of finance and the Ben Graham Chair in Value Investing at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business, has the answer. He calls it "the Trudeau effect". According to Prof. Athanassakos, statistics measuring employment, production and the like paint a picture of the economy as it is. Today's picture may be rosy enough, he says, but investors are thinking about tomorrow and the next day, trying to predict whether things will get better or worse. And when they look at the policies and actions of Just In Trudeau's Liberal government, they are not encouraged, so they don't pile into an "iffy" market.
The professor's thesis is nicely summed up in "The 'Trudeau Effect' dragging down Canada's stock markets just got much, much worse", published in Canada's Financial Post today. It's so good that I'm going to repost the whole thing, hoping that the Post and the prof won't mind. [We don't make any money from WWW -- not one red cent! Ed.] Here `tis. The emphasis is mine.
A few months ago I wrote in these pages about the “Trudeau effect,” my term for the serious underperformance of the Canadian stock market vis-à-vis the American markets since the election of the federal Liberal government under Justin Trudeau.
The differential market performance has become even more pronounced since I wrote that article, especially in the last three months. Over the last two years, as of the end of September 2018, State Street’s SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker: SPY), which is designed to track the S&P 500, outperformed its Canadian equivalent, the iShares S&P TSX 60 Index ETF (ticker: XIU) by about 11.5 per cent on an annual basis. But from July to September 2018, we have seen the U.S. market index outperform the Canadian stock index by a whopping 28.8 per cent annualized.
One might ask: Why look at the stock market and not the performance of the economy? Indeed, Canada’s economic performance is one of the best in the G7 while the stock market has been a laggard. So what is a better gauge of successful management of the economy and the country? Should economic performance not be highly correlated with the stock market?”
In reality, the stock market discounts the future not the current economic performance. And Canada’s future looks less than clear under the stewardship of this Liberal government.
Trudeau and his ministers have made it clear they want corporations to become benevolent organizations that put workers before shareholders. They favour taxing corporations and the rich, and adding regulatory impediments and red tape to corporate activity. They are big supporters of income redistribution as opposed to making the pie bigger for everyone. They want to regulate the economy and nudge corporations to submit to the Liberal government’s social views and economic philosophy.
Their policies take away economic entrepreneurship and wealth creation and replace it with handouts to every significant lobby and activist group. The Liberal government increasingly seems not to understand how people get jobs and how they get by, and how heavily favouring environmental issues stirred up by activists over economic concerns takes jobs away.
There’s an old saying that if you’re not a communist at the age of 20 you haven’t got a heart and if you’re still a communist at the age of 40, you haven’t got a brain. Canada today seems to be run by politicians in their 40s behaving like they’re in their 20s. Focusing only on the environment or on social engineering at the expense of working families is elitist. And Canadians are getting the sense that they are governed by a bunch of idealistic and dogmatic college students convinced they will save the world.
The Liberals have crossed swords with powerful countries. They have antagonized the United States, Russia, China, India and Saudi Arabia, just to mention a few. But a small country like Canada has to co-operate with powerful countries, not sit and judge them disapprovingly from some moral high horse. And progress takes time. Improvements to society and the world happen incrementally, not instantaneously.
When a democratically elected majority government ends up following policies driven by activists, it is neglecting its larger mission and mandate and that will eventually hurt the economy. This is what the stock market is anticipating.
Footnote: The photo of Mr Socks making cow eyes at George Soros did not appear in the Post!
Why is this? George Athanassakos, a professor of finance and the Ben Graham Chair in Value Investing at the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business, has the answer. He calls it "the Trudeau effect". According to Prof. Athanassakos, statistics measuring employment, production and the like paint a picture of the economy as it is. Today's picture may be rosy enough, he says, but investors are thinking about tomorrow and the next day, trying to predict whether things will get better or worse. And when they look at the policies and actions of Just In Trudeau's Liberal government, they are not encouraged, so they don't pile into an "iffy" market.
The professor's thesis is nicely summed up in "The 'Trudeau Effect' dragging down Canada's stock markets just got much, much worse", published in Canada's Financial Post today. It's so good that I'm going to repost the whole thing, hoping that the Post and the prof won't mind. [We don't make any money from WWW -- not one red cent! Ed.] Here `tis. The emphasis is mine.
A few months ago I wrote in these pages about the “Trudeau effect,” my term for the serious underperformance of the Canadian stock market vis-à-vis the American markets since the election of the federal Liberal government under Justin Trudeau.
The differential market performance has become even more pronounced since I wrote that article, especially in the last three months. Over the last two years, as of the end of September 2018, State Street’s SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (ticker: SPY), which is designed to track the S&P 500, outperformed its Canadian equivalent, the iShares S&P TSX 60 Index ETF (ticker: XIU) by about 11.5 per cent on an annual basis. But from July to September 2018, we have seen the U.S. market index outperform the Canadian stock index by a whopping 28.8 per cent annualized.
One might ask: Why look at the stock market and not the performance of the economy? Indeed, Canada’s economic performance is one of the best in the G7 while the stock market has been a laggard. So what is a better gauge of successful management of the economy and the country? Should economic performance not be highly correlated with the stock market?”
In reality, the stock market discounts the future not the current economic performance. And Canada’s future looks less than clear under the stewardship of this Liberal government.
Trudeau and his ministers have made it clear they want corporations to become benevolent organizations that put workers before shareholders. They favour taxing corporations and the rich, and adding regulatory impediments and red tape to corporate activity. They are big supporters of income redistribution as opposed to making the pie bigger for everyone. They want to regulate the economy and nudge corporations to submit to the Liberal government’s social views and economic philosophy.
Their policies take away economic entrepreneurship and wealth creation and replace it with handouts to every significant lobby and activist group. The Liberal government increasingly seems not to understand how people get jobs and how they get by, and how heavily favouring environmental issues stirred up by activists over economic concerns takes jobs away.
There’s an old saying that if you’re not a communist at the age of 20 you haven’t got a heart and if you’re still a communist at the age of 40, you haven’t got a brain. Canada today seems to be run by politicians in their 40s behaving like they’re in their 20s. Focusing only on the environment or on social engineering at the expense of working families is elitist. And Canadians are getting the sense that they are governed by a bunch of idealistic and dogmatic college students convinced they will save the world.
The Liberals have crossed swords with powerful countries. They have antagonized the United States, Russia, China, India and Saudi Arabia, just to mention a few. But a small country like Canada has to co-operate with powerful countries, not sit and judge them disapprovingly from some moral high horse. And progress takes time. Improvements to society and the world happen incrementally, not instantaneously.
When a democratically elected majority government ends up following policies driven by activists, it is neglecting its larger mission and mandate and that will eventually hurt the economy. This is what the stock market is anticipating.
Footnote: The photo of Mr Socks making cow eyes at George Soros did not appear in the Post!
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