Juggling Dynamite

Plastics, pollution and over-fishing have already eradicated most large sea life.  At this point, we are either a person making active choices to help reverse the destruction or we are not.

James Blunt is best known as a singer, but he’s also an outspoken advocate for ocean conservation. Blunt sat down with Jim Edwards, editor-in-chief of Business Insider UK, to discuss why he’s campaigning for sustainable fishing and why he is a spokesperson for the Blue Marine Foundation.  Here is a direct video link.

I have been writing for years on the perils for consumers of media and investment conferences sponsored by financial sales firms and their representatives.  While the costs were writ clear in the 2008 financial collapse, the lack of will to separate financial sales from advising, or prosecute large institutions for ongoing fraud and reckless activities since, have enabled an intensification of dangers.  CBC Go Public investigated one such example recently in ‘Fake’ experts on radio shows conned listeners out of millions, experts say:

The case highlights the increasingly blurred line between programs that sound like news but are actually paid advertising, and how disclaimers often do little to inform audiences of the difference, says media ethicist Stephen Ward.

“The whole area of paid content is an ethical quagmire … Cases where it’s blurred cause false stories,” he said.

In this case, ‘foreign exchange experts’ were regularly featured on at least five local radio stations — owned by Corus Entertainment and Bell Media — that ran in southern Ontario between 2016 and part of 2017.  These actors were allegedly outright fraudsters paying to appear as expert guests and then stealing customer deposits for their own use.

That said, financial sales representatives buying spots that are then delivered to the public as valuable insight goes far beyond this case.  Bloomberg, CNBC and BNN are all based on this heavily-conflicted model.  And, as I wrote in 2011, the CBC and other long-standing news outlets have also succumbed to some of these revenue-focused tactics over the last 15 years, see CBC television degrades itself, as well as O’Leary not admirable or worthy of leadership.

The bottom line is that media and media personalities tend to have a larger-than-life influence on viewers and listeners, buyers need to be very wary.

Now that China is struggling with slowing growth, massive debt and an aging population, a hunt to recover funds siphoned out of the country over the last decade has begun in earnest.  Clawbacks can drive forced selling of property in previously ‘hot flow’ countries like Australia and Canada, just as domestic demand in these markets is also weakening.  International inflows helped to drive property prices far above reason over the past decade, and their outflows will help to drive prices back down.  This is likely to compound stress on other owners and lenders who are highly levered in these markets.

As China transforms into an economic powerhouse, billions of dollars have been illegally spirited out of the country. Mark Willacy reports on the bounty hunters chasing China’s missing millions in Australia. Here is a direct video link.