Juggling Dynamite

In March, when COVID-19 shutdowns were just starting, 46% of Canadians polled said they were on the brink of insolvency and less than $200 away from not being able to pay all their bills each month (MNP by Ipsos).  Since then, one-third of Canadian workers have applied for government income support and many are unable to make their debt and rent payments.

Lenders, landlords and tax collectors have responded with forbearance:  a temporary postponement of payment and collection efforts.  You can’t collect where there’s no money to be found, and seizing property and equipment when there’s a dearth of buyers is unlikely to yield the quick cash sought.  As a result, payment pressures have subsided and bankruptcy filings have fallen sharply in April.   However, payment deferrals quite literally add up and much of the revenue and income that has been lost will not be recouped later.

Doug Hoyes, a licensed insolvency trustee and co-founder of Toronto-based Hoyes, Michalos & Associates points out that the present bankruptcy calm is likely to end as soon as collection efforts resume.  See personal and business bankruptcy surge expected this fall:

“We need one domino to fall. And that may be at the end of August, when the CRA is, in fact, starting to seek payments for income tax or arrears of tax…By the time we get to the fall, the collection agencies are back at work. The banks want their money. The emergency benefits have stopped. So if in September and October, we saw a 20, 30, 40, 50 per cent spike in bankruptcies, that wouldn’t surprise me.”

A similar great deferral period is playing out in small businesses at the moment, even as a third of Canadian owners recently surveyed say they are unlikely to reopen after the shutdown.  Lou Brzezinski, a partner in the Toronto-based legal firm Blaney McMurtry that specializes in business reorganization, insolvency, liquidation and bankruptcy sees lenders ending up with pennies on the dollar and grim prospects for many sectors:

“How many small retail stores, how many restaurants, how much of the hospitality industry has been struck down for good that we will never see again?  I’d say it’s just short of catastrophic…I see the majority of the small businesses not surviving the bankruptcy. I see them ending.”

Hoisington Management’s economist Dr. Lacy Hunt’s segment starts at 22 minutes on the playbar and is worth a mull.  The net result of higher debt and monetary manipulation is retarded growth for a very long period of time.  We are now Japan.

Here is a direct audio link.

“We came into 2020 in a very weak condition and then we had the coronavirus. And we’re now experiencing a recession that has all the looks of being the worst one since 1945.  Assuming the virus is contained in time for a resumption of normal activities by the end of the year there will be some recovery in GDP in the 4th quarter, perhaps in the second half of the 3rd quarter.  But even under that assumption we are going to close 2020 with an unprecedented output gap…we are going to stagger out of the recession and it’s going to take us 6 to 7 years, maybe even longer, to restore the output gap to where it was at the end of last year.  And so this recession is actually going to produce deflation and the net result is that we are going to press the interest rates down to the zero bound and they’re going to be stuck there for a considerable period of time.”

“…Remember debt is a increase in current spending in exchange for a decline in future spending, unless you generate an income stream to repay the principal and interest.  And we’re borrowing astronomical sums, but the funds are going to maintain daily living needs to allow people to put food on the table, pay their rent…but it will not generate an income stream to repay principal and interest.”

I reviewed Planet of Humans here on the blog last week and noted that while the film was outdated, lacking and misleading in many ways, it was best when pointing out that biomass is not a solution.  This audio interview with Stanford engineer Mark Jacobson offers an expert response from someone who has actually done the blueprints for transitioning every country and major city in the world to sustainable energy and jobs.  He notes that biomass–a major focus of the film–is not a fuel used in any of the plans.

In response to the Michael Moore film Planet of Humans, Stanford Professor Mark Z Jacobson, a civil and environmental engineer who is one of the architects of the energy transition plan foundational to the Green New Deal discusses the current state of solar, wind, hydro-electric and more to move us rapidly from fossil fuel-dependent energy to 100% Renewable Energy (with 2030 as the target for an 80% transition)— in conversation with Alison Rose Levy.

Here is a direct audio link.