Juggling Dynamite

About those world-famous-sky-high Canadian home prices that have helped drive record debt enslavement for Canadian households that will cost our economy for years to come…there’s an even darker side to some of the price-indiscriminant buying–money laundering proceeds of crime.  That’s right, cash from the debilitating opioid epidemic and other crime rings can be directly traced to properties that have then served as market value benchmarks ratcheting up shelter costs for regular law-abiding families.

British Columbia is the main entry point for illicit drug flows into Canada. A new provincial report this week concludes that criminals have run largely unchecked since there are currently no federal RCMP officers dedicated to money laundering investigations in BC, and this needs to change immediately if we’ve any hope of crimping the dirty money flow and associated social problems in Canada, see Review finds zero federal anti-money laundering police officers working in BC.  Also, see the Global News report below,

As always, intolerance from consumers is a critical part of driving change.  This requires thinking people to actively seek alternate products and producers that minimize plastic packaging, as well as bringing our own containers and bags to stores and leaving plastic packaging piled up at the checkout where necessary.  When it happens enough, store managers and owners take note.  See Intolerance for plastic pushing producers to change.

With its deep fossil fuel industry ties (90% of present plastics are petroleum-based), Canada is far behind the EU and other countries in banning non-biodegradeable single-use plastics.  We have to dramatically reduce packaging, and where plastics are wanted make them from plants and other biodegradable materials; time for bold actions.  There are already solutions like combining natural rubber with bio-plastic which are stronger and more felxible than petro-plastics. A ban on non-biodegradable plastics would focus investment and demand on sustainable packaging types.  See Study shows potential for earth-friendly plastic replacement.

We name and rate the top five most outrageously overpackaged products, and we take them all to our federal environment minister Catherine McKenna to see what’s being done to minimize the waste. All companies agree plastic is a big problem but most won’t agree to make change. So will government act? After our interview, she promises changes coming in June.Here is a direct video link.

Financialization, share buybacks, the shareholder primacy mindset, decades of tax cuts and government bailouts for ‘too big to fail’ companies, have all worked to socialize costs and subsidize a tiny fraction of the population at the expense of the rest.  Systems that don’t self-correct end up imploding one way or another.  Prior eras of extreme wealth inequality have typically ended in periods of redistribution through high taxation,  confiscation and sometimes war.

A growing number of those who’ve benefited from the current system are increasingly sounding the alarm about the need to take proactive redistributive steps to help rebuild strength in the broader population and economy before more harsh forces do the job. This segment discusses.

Peter Georgescu, chairman emeritus at Young & Rubicam and author of “Capitalists Arise!,” and Torsten Slok, chief international economist at Deutsche Bank, discuss the challenges presented by income inequality and the depth of the problem in the United States. Here is a direct video link.

Also, see hedge fund manager Ray Dalio’s recent essay Why and How capitalism needs to be reformed (Parts 1 and 2) for his ‘To Do’ list on this topic.  And, John Mauldin’s Capitalism Gone Wild this week is also worth reading.