Juggling Dynamite

Extending the OPEC plus Russia cuts should help bring commercial petroleum inventories down and boost crude prices by a few dollars a barrel in the short-term. But in the bigger picture:  OPEC (Canada and other dependent exporters) are likely to lose revenue while the US becomes the world’s top oil producer.  All the while, slower global growth, increasing efficiency and booming alternative energies will continue to erode the world’s oil demand.  Less demand and more supply lead to lower prices and a transformation of  the power structure that has dominated the world for the past 60+ years.  Messy but necessary for evolution.  See:  The real winner from oil supply cuts:

The ultimate free-rider on Saudi sacrifice is nimble U.S. shale. So much capital is now being deployed that the U.S. may become the world’s top oil producer by 2018, topping Russia and Saudi Arabia.

While some 25% of Canadian GDP has come from realty and related services over the past 7 years, nearly all–s0me 84%–of Canadian economic growth since 2010 has come from abnormally high activity in this sector.  As a result, it does not require a price collapse, just a moderation in this activity, for the Canadian economy to flat line.  Even the congenitally nearsighted Bank of Canada has admitted that the pace of growth in realty and related spending is ‘not sustainable’.  So um, ya… Plan B?

After Home Capital, Canada’s Economy Suddenly Looks Frail. Here is a direct video link
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I have never been a credit union member, but I recently saw a billboard outside a local Meridian that was advertising below-market mortgage rates along with above-market dividend yields, with the clear implication that one could borrow to ‘invest’ for the spread. Intrigued, I went in to ask about their offering, and was surprised (silly of me) to meet a ‘financial adviser’ who was happy to tell me about the credit union’s promotional rates and ‘end to end offering of wealth management manglement products‘.  Apparently, being a credit union, rather than a bank, is no assurance of impartial advice or duty of care to the clients.

It reminded me that the financial sales culture has been so enabled and grotesquely profitable for its perpetrators this past decade, their focus on scale and insatiable growth have become taught and emulated far and wide.  I was therefore not surprised this morning to read CBC’s latest report in its ongoing expose of the finance sector in Canada.  See:  Credit union employees say high-pressure sales tactics turn ‘members’ into ‘marks’.