Canadian Guy

Defense Sector Will Suffer Due to Economic Collapse, Budgetary Constraints

Part of this military spending is directly used to protect the oil suppliers in the middle east and the oil tanker routes on the oceans.

I believe that the Pentagon produced a report a couple of years ago stating that the U.S. taxpayers were paying just over $100 a barrel in defence taxes to protect their oil supply in addition to whatever the cost of oil was at the time on the world markets.

This is one of the reasons that the Pentagon has become one of the largest promoters of renewable energy as a means to attain U.S. energy independence.

If the U.S. can become more independent of imported oil then defence costs can be reduced.

China Becoming a 'Middle-Class' Nation

People here can argue about the percentage of the Chinese economy is made up of the poor or middle class, but it is the totality of this dynamic and growing economy that truly impresses.

Do not forget, the largest economy in the world in the 19th century was Imperial Britain. In the 20th century it was the U.S. For most of the preceding two thousand years it was China.

The Implications of Russia's Declining U.S. Debt Purchases

On Jul 20 12:06 PM inthemoney wrote:

> > China has designs on Siberia - maybe the Russians will sell it
> to them - ala Alaska.
>
> The hell will freeze sooner than Russia will part with anymore of
> its territory.
>
> As for the Russians not buying US Treasuries, do you remember that
> oil collapsed? They don't have the spare money. Whatever they have
> they are using to deal with the recession and credit freeze.

Actually, over a million Chinese citizens move into Siberia every year and have been since the 1980's. They now dominate commerce everywhere in the region and Mandarin is spoken more commonly than Russian. Even the local Russian traders have learned to speak it in order to continue to stay in business.

China has a long memory and has stated for over a century that Siberia was stolen from them back when they were a weak basket case. This will not be the case in the next few decades.

I personally believe that the Taiwan issue is just a smoke screen that the PRC leadership uses to deflect the world's attention from their eventual seizure of most of Siberia from Russia. The next half of the 21st century is going to be very, very interesting.

Exxon's Biofuel Bet

Add those defense deparment costs to the Saudi cost of $2 a barrel, as well as the environmental damage that cheap Saudi oil has and will continue to cause and the price difference between the algae fuel and conventional oil is no longer that big a deal.

Exxon's Biofuel Bet

On Jul 20 08:01 AM Lara Crigger wrote:

> Yes, it costs $33/gallon to produce algae fuel. But what *was* a
> typo was the estimated cost of producing Saudi crude: That should
> be $2/BARREL, not $2/gallon.That just goes to show just how wide
> the gulf is between these two production costs.

Over a year ago I read that the U.S. Defense Department estimated that the American taxpayer spent over $100 a barrel for all the military costs to guard the world's oil shipping lanes, oil loading and off-loading sites and some refineries, pipe lines and oil fields, especially in the middle east and north Africa. This is one of the reasons that the U.S. military is very keen on promoting biofuel develop in the U.S. Energy independence for the U.S. and fewer reasons to get stuck in wars far from its shores.

Apartment Vacancies Cause New Nightmare in U.S. Housing Collapse

What a difference a border makes.

In June, the greater Toronto area (GTA) which includes the city of Toronto and all the outlying suburbs, approximately 5 million people, set a record for the most number of homes sold in a month.

Listings are down 30% from the boom times a year or so ago, but sales continue due to lower interest rates and the fact that people are spending less money in general, therefore have higher saveings for down payments when they do decide to buy a home.

Compare this to the economic desolation I see when I cross the border to visit Buffalo and I'm glad our Canadian bankers have always been a bunch of tight fisted twats who refused to lend money to people if they couldn't prove they could repay it.

Meet the Top Ten Creditors to the USA

"Canada, a close trading partner of U.S., has bought securities worth $11B only"

That is because we know you better than most of your creditors and have suffered along with the average American in the past during bouts of hyper-inflation. We know that it's just a matter of time before inflation is unleashed to pay off this debt, so why bother buying it.

High-Yield Canadian Royalty Trusts vs. Dividend Growth Stocks

All non-real estate Royalty Trusts will be forced to change their structures to corporations after 2011. For some, like Penwest or Pengrowth it wil mean changing monthly distributions to quarterly dividends. If the payout amounts do drop a bit it may not be that much since the world economy will have recovered (at least partially) by then and oil prices should have increased enough to improve the trusts profitability.

As for real estate trusts, while the U.S. market continues to get crushed, the Canadian market looks to be more like a cyclical down cycle. RIOCAN is a multi-billion dollar real estate trust paying out approximately 10% with a record of NEVER having cut its distributions. It is well run and has a highly diversified porfolio of shopping malls and office towers, with an average occupancy of 97% and the vast majority still being 100% occupied. In their retail malls they have anchor tenants like the big 5 Canadian banks, Wal-mart, or large grocery stores, so their malls always have traffic.

While the 2011 change will mean that RIOCAN can no longer use mezzanine financing to raise cash it does not mean it will be forced to change its structure to a corporation and it will continue to be profitable and pay out its distributions.

Sorry to sound like an advertisement, but I researched alot of them and have made RIOCAN one of my core Canroy holdings.

Canadian Energy Infrastructure Income Trusts: The Big Picture

msgtb:

Here is a link for most (if not all, I'm not sure) Canadian resource trusts:

www.investcom.com/cgi-...

The site also provides information on Real Estate, Retail and other trusts as well:

www.investcom.com/inco...

Benefits of Immigration and Migration

"the number of foreign born aliens admitted to countries, including the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others."

The writer makes Canada sound like some sort of Utopia. Anybody who's visited Toronto, Canada's richest, largest and most powerful city (think New York, Chicago and L.A. combined) and ventured out of the downtown tourist zones would find vast tracks of ghettos and public housing that are now populated exclusively by foreigners from the third world.

A population of educated Hong Kong and Tawain based immigrants has been supplanted by poor, unskilled, non-English speaking Chinese from the mainland who now need and demand social services at an ever growing rate.

A quarter million Tamil refugees gives it the largest population outside Sri Lanka, but over 80% continue to live on welfare and in public housing more than 20 years after their arrival, doing nothing but providing a massive drain on the incomes of Canadian born workers.

A huge and exponentially growing muslim population of Afghans, Somalis and Pakistanis who refuse to integrate, learn English or moderate their primitive, militant religious-cultural beliefs thus their women are unemployable and their men useless in anything beyond the most menial task. Needless to say, they too live mostly on welfare and in public housing and when they do work it's something like driving cabs where they don't declare their income and refuse to pay income taxes, all while demanding more and more from the Canadian born tax payers.

Nirvana this ain't!

Fed's Expansion of Balance Sheet No Cause for Inflation Worries

"Well my friends, the global economy is at the lowest point of utilization of capacity in over seven decades."

You also seem to be basing this on the assumption that all of the capacity that existed at the start of this recession/depression will still be in existance when we finally start recovering.

Up here in Canada that simply won't be so. Factories (capacity) close by the dozens EVERY DAY in Ontario and Quebec. The equipment is sold off, but most likely scrapped for a pittance of its former value. These jobs and this capacity will not return when demand does.

Isn't the lack of supply and increasing demand the classic recipe for inflation? The demand will eventually be there too since the North American savings rate is currently hitting levels that it has not been at for decades. That money has to go somewhere.

And in case you haven't been paying attention around the globe in places like China, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia and Mexico, factories are permanently closing and companies going bust there at record numbers too. The loss of capacity will be a world wide phenomenon as will the ensuing inflation.

60 Minutes on Oil: Did Anyone Verify Anything?

"The ETF changed the oil game and the collapse will insure that the same players will move over to something else. "

They have, it just wasn't that far of a move. The same futures/options traders that drove oil up on the long side are now driving it down on the short side. There is still no realistic correlation between the changes in world supply/demand and the artificial movements of the oil contracts.

High Yielding Stocks Going Ex-Dividend in Mid-January

"1% is not high yield"

Agreed!

There are lots of Canadian energy and Real Estate trusts paying out over 10%. And that's after having already cut their distributions and then seen their prices follow downward.

Buying them now doesn't just give you the distribution, but also lots of upside potential.

And yes, I know the articles about "dividends" and not "distributions", but cash is cash, no matter what it's called when it's paid to you.

On Board the 'U.S.S. Titanic'

The best article on this issue that I've ever read.

Every Canadian needs to read this too because it's inevitable that whenever the U.S. suffers then Canada suffers too.

Option ARM Time Bomb About To Explode

This is only "old news" in some of the financial press. The business sections of the popular press and mainstream media still hasn't caught on.

When reading most of them, it seems like the housing market will hit its bottom some time in early 2009 and everything will start getting better after that. They're living in a fool's paradise when they really should be printing articles like this.

One of the best ways to make money in the next 3 years will be shorting bank stocks or buying put options on them.