Juggling Dynamite

Alberta is the only Canadian province to offer non-recourse residential mortgages where owners can hand keys back to their lender and walk away without further liability. Because these are traditional mortgages with a 20%+ down payment, they are not insured by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), which leaves risk of loss with the lender.  As job losses rise, less people are coming to Alberta and more are looking to leave.  All of this is adding downward pressure to home prices that were badly inflated during the 2001-11 commodities boom.  Fort McMurray and the luxury market in Calgary have already seen prices drop 20% from the highs of 2014 and counting.  See:  Jingle mail raises ugly head in Alberta.

Jingle mail — the act of walking away from an underwater mortgage by mailing your keys back to the bank — is a peculiarity of the Alberta residential market and an act of desperation. However, a combination of high debt and lost jobs make it an option in a province going through a significant economic reckoning.

“Jingle mail, or strategic defaults, weaken the housing market and increase loan losses among Canada’s banks.”

“I’ve got to just jump in here because, honestly, Senator Sanders is the only person who would characterize me a woman running to be the first woman president as exemplifying the establishment.” –Hillary Clinton, February 4, 2016

Reality:  As America learned after the 2008 election, correcting systemic inequality takes much more that just changing the race of the leader.  A change of sex won’t solve the issues here either.  If only it were that simple.  Here is a direct video link.

Let me give you an idea of how corrupt this system is. Goldman Sachs recently fined $5 billion. Goldman Sachs has given this country two secretaries of Treasury, one under Republicans, one under Democrats.

The leader of Goldman Sachs is a billionaire who comes to Congress and tells us we should cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Secretary Clinton, and you’re not the only one, I don’t mean to just point the finger at you, you’ve received over $600,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs in one year. I find it very strange that a major financial institution that pays $5 billion in fines for breaking the law, not one of their executives is prosecuted, while kids who smoke marijuana get a jail time.  Here is a direct video link.