Juggling Dynamite

The Globe’s Report on Business section this Saturday was a cautionary feature extravaganza on Canada’s debt binge.  Some excellent articles and charts (see the info graphic summary here).

It is not a pretty picture, but facts must be faced and risks managed.  Sticking heads in the sand will not help.  Years of low rates have fueled reckless lending and borrowing and set Canada up for a doozie of a mean reversion cycle.  The exodus and closure of Canadian retailers (today Canada’s largest and most over-built sector) is only started.  This warns of more layoffs and empty commercial space.  It also underlines the financial fragility in Canadian families as well as the debt/risk-selling Canadian finance sector (see: A plague of financials), and the taxpayer-backed Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Times are a changing as debt revulsion spreads.  The adjustment periods are painful, but speaking publicly and admitting the debt mistakes people have made are critical parts of the healing process.  If we must make financial mistakes, earlier is better than later of course, when people have less time to recover.  Everyone can make better choices by learning from the stories of others.  Time for honest discussions.

‘It’s dream crushing’: law student on being $150,000 in debt. Here is a direct video link.

How one young family is digging out of debt.  Here is a direct video link.

Bankrupt at 19: How one man climbed out of debt and started a new life. Here is a direct video link.

This film focuses on Wal-mart, but the themes extend to multinational conglomerates generally and help to explain why local spending has increasingly been funneled out of local communities and into offshore jobs and shareholders.  We have all been part of creating current deficits, and we can all be part of the solution.  If we want to reverse these trends and rebuild financial strength, we must consciously direct our own spending in ways that stays and recycles through our own communities and economy.

The film exposes Wal-Mart’s unscrupulous business practices through interviews with former employees, small business owners, and footage of Wal-mart executives. Here is a direct video link.

This short film is a good summary of the banking system today.  Reckless leverage in the financial sector, encouraged by government guarantees and reflated by QE, has created the financial monster now eating us.  Here is a direct video link to part 1.

Here is a link to The Second Part of that film about Money.