Comments by "Kristopher Driver" (@paxdriver) on "The Plain Bagel" channel.

You did so well man, and I especially like the self critique. Shows people what they could be expecting from the seasoned journalists too when they don't, so feel free to actually state what you disagreed with and how you would have liked to have pressed. It's all part of critical thinking. People on this channel saw a good example just now of how they can disagree with your objections so it would be good practise. A video like this would not be tarnished by your injection of bias either, you don't do it on every video so it would be consistent for you to comment on topic with rational reasons and carefully structured disclosures like you do. Perfectly reasonable and in keeping with the channel's ethos imho.
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Russia wasn't really a default when the lender forces the default by not allowing trade or currency exchange. It's a really strange situation technically speaking.
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Give them all the time in the world they still won't read.. Because they can't. They got degrees by paying and memorizing, not by learning to interpret or apply critical thinking. Those words are just hollow compliments now, they don't mean anything to newly hired journalists fresh out of exam-culture because they're cheaper than veterans. When was the last time you read an editorial that explained something more than one layer deep. Productivity skyrockets from technology these past 20 years but somehow journalists still believe that every scheme is simple and superficial as it used to be lol.
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Accessibility request: charts like @6:47 for a person without colour sensitivities are 80% broken if the order of the legend doesn't line up with where the lines charted either start or end. At least if ordered by by the ending positions even colour blind folk could gain everything from this chart instead of only see dots, dashes, and solid lines. Or colour selection could maybe work too, not sure though because I'm not even fully blind but still can't tell lol 😅 If you're looking for ways to improve that'd be an easy one to write as a script, that's all, not a big deal. Thanks for all the hard work, love this channel. People who aren't subscribed are doing themselves a disservice.
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Brain drain is only an issue if your public school system is awful. It's not a threat to any country with stable healthcare and education. More room for more innovation. Countries like USA need to sacrifice their own people to incentivize outside moguls because they don't invent or produce on their own thanks to their corrupt education system and lack of safety nets. They write-off their own working poor to incentivize outsiders because they apparently don't believe in their own population. Canada doesn't have that probably. Ambitious go-getters like myself do well in this country by merit, and if I leave others will readily take my place. There's something to be said for setting up a resilient system rather than chasing the fruits of others.
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For context, working at Safeway used to be union, and the lifers could save up for and buy houses and drive used cars on that salary. Even the poorest shopped for groceries at Safeway if it was closest or saved them bus fare. If prices were high but the neighbourhood grocery lifer was also watching the kids play, babysitting, and just being a good neighbour because she wasn't afraid of being attacked outside her home, that's a benefit. It's fewer defaults, fewer senior citizen poverty thanks to the pension plan, and motivated workers who got to know their neighbours at work over decades of consistency. We've lost a lot to be asked to accept food prices to rise in lock step with everything else considering tax subsidize them too, we've already given up a lot, and we're more pinched than ever somehow while they are the highest paid rent-seekers this country has, as far as executives and businessmen/leaders they presume to be to be worth their weight in salt... Just think cost benefit compared to 20 years ago - it doesn't even compare relative to the average budget for groceries these days. That's why I'm launching an app soon, because I have grocery prices in Canada over time, and I've built a platform to help people save money on their groceries in Canada.
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It drives me crazy you keep parroting the argument that it's unclear of what a security is. SEC has clearly defined it. "The term “security” means any note, stock, treasury stock, security future, security-based swap, bond, debenture, evidence of indebtedness, certificate of interest or participation in any profit-sharing agreement, collateral-trust certificate, preorganization certificate or subscription, transferable share, investment ... " When you receive money for a stake in a crypto held by a broker that broker is issuing a security for that crypto / blockchain-registry / whatever you call it. That's why eth and bitcoin aren't securities, but custodial wallets for hedged coins are because they're swaps for registered securities. It's defined clearly, their argument is just playing dumb. It's not a legitimate argument at all to anyone who checks what is and isn't a security and the process for registering with the SEC is also clear as even Robin hood could do it - but the reason for caymen hq and us subsidiaries is they know they're doing something illegal and they're actively trying to sideskirt known legislation. The fact they set up the business that way shows they are acutely aware of the limits and restrictions but they're prepared to risk part of the business for the arbitrage opportunity. It's disingenuous to pretend they don't know what is a security, it's very very clear what is, it's just not clear what the first full service security crypto brokerage would look like because they're all playing dumb and waiting to be told how to build a business rather than leading the charge. The difference between bros and CEOs is effort and competence.
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The stock prices are a good example, bonuses, staff reductions and union busting, the price gouging doesn't have to only be monetary. Cutting full time workers to reduce liabilities is also a price we pay, and fewer, less reliable, hours of work means even more inefficient uses of human capital and the health of the next generation raised impoverished and afraid of starving in a country where food production is a national export... Nobody in this country should have trouble securing food or shelter. We have nothing but labour intelligence, space and resources. It's absurd to think even modestly high food prices should be tolerated when the stuff is mostly grown in the dirt all around us which we insure and subsidize.
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Answer: executive pay bumps and expense accounts have anything to do with that calculation? Sounds like a bonus might be considered a direct labour cost which the accountants might like to accrue over the year to help the optics...
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So it's 11% + 1.5% + taxes on profit / share value appreciation... So literally a TFSA pays better than the 9.9% average valuation over their net profits. That, in a market whose value is determined by restrictive access, free port tax havens, and incestuous trading between tax dodgers and billionaires. Masterworks is the scam of all scams. It doesn't just make people feel like millionaire insiders, it makes them believe the price tags on art are real and not fabricated by the select few who can afford to trade them between eachother to help prop up prices and in a market which only gains traction when income disparity widens dramatically.. It's like a scheme of selling newly minted pyramid schemes to people who believe they're on the inside track of the bubble this time lol
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You're forgetting the introduction of CMHC in the 90's, when suddenly a whole lot of people were suddenly able to become homeowners while prices were lower (due to the significantly lower demand relative to after implementing CMHC). That was everyone's chance to get in, with new homes now requiring inheritance or family aid from their 90's home to bump them from an 180k mortgage down to the 120k mortgage they qualify for. This is equilibrium, as much as an inflationary fiscal policy can allow stability Canada's real estate market is right in balance economically speaking.
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Everyone else, btw, starts off in a condo they can afford. Others rent forever and invest in savings plans because senior residents are subsidized after a certain age. The problem is big money can come to town and wreak havoc because of the small and sparse population, exchange rate, and scale of our market system. Immigration is definitely a good thing, as you said. Just wanted to emphasize that too.
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the world left the dollar as the reserve currency over night, it would lose value, thus the oil futures contracts would massively increase in value, so Americans who held open commodity contracts or foreign stocks everywhere on earth would suddenly surge due to the exchange rate of every currency against the dollar. So if we go off the dollar overnight we'll make billionaires of oil industry mogols, entertainment, foreign bonds of all kinds, and property in an instant. The wealthy of the country could hugely benefit from this if they're diversified, only the bottom 70% of the population not owning any foreign stuck would suffer from this... In fact wages and everything would plummet relatively, making everything cheaper for the billionaires who quintupled their tax-preferred foreign investments, enabling them to scoop up middle class property as it dropped in value absent buyers at fair market price due to increased costs if personal imports like clothes, food, and now oil. This would be a huge transfer of wealth if it ever happened, imho. That risk isn't worth the benefit of exporting inflation, rather pay what you owe every year rather than defer under the sword of Damacles in perpetuity.
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Yes. Love it
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Productivity declines when a generation is priced out of wealth and raising a family, spending time in the community and expecting to be compensated based on productivity and merit. Why wouldn't productivity go down when we've disenfranchised millions of people? Income disparity makes even 80% of rich people poorer than they would be otherwise from a population spending frivolously because they have disposable income.
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Manitoba and Saskatchewan are like 10% of the country's population, some of the cheapest property and construction materials largely in situ. How is it even possible housing markets are inaccessible if you're "trying" for 10 years to fix the problem?
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I submitted BIM renders and cutsheets for modular housing and all I got back from 3 MP's was a brochure that didn't even sound like they read my cover letter, never mind proposal. There's no interest in fixing housing, their wealth is tied to higher prices. Why is conflict of interest no longer a thing? It's not hard. You got people who want to get in the middle class you could train building modular houses. Same thing over and over again. Anyone can learn that regardless of education. These aren't unsolvable problems, these are problems 6-figure salaried MPs don't want to fix. They can't even write a letter on their own...
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@dundun8640 ya, they do. When you can't receive usd for rubles then you can't pay a usd denominated debt. Russia put the payment value in rubles in escrow as usual but couldn't convert the currency and thus couldn't make the payment. That type of default is very very different from a country deciding not to pay or being unable or unwilling to pay.
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@seneca983 they chose to offer payment in rubles, which would not have been an issue without cutting off exchanges. They could have paid in USD they received for energy, but they needed those funds given the fact it's the only access they have to usd and they're at war. That makes usd more valuable to then due to scarcity. It's like saying "you could've eaten insects instead of my cake if you're starving to death from my embargo". Ya, I could have, but the issue is you're starving me and cake is more appetizing. I wouldn't have had to eat your cake if you would let me buy groceries. I'm not defending Russia, I'm pointing out that the type of default is not standard, it's artificially provoked by the west in retaliation for Russia provoking the west by invading Ukraine unprovoked
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Several issues here: the currency depreciation from lowering interest rates makes a bigger difference than stock prices priced in said currency. The compounding of both stock volatility and currency volatility is a exponential multiplier in extreme cases, meaning when currency appreciates after acquiring stock even if the dividen goes down the shareholder may see an increase in ROI nevertheless. Another factor forgotten is the circumstances that lead to a rate change, often not the rate changing that is the cause but rather the attenuation of a more sever movement on the horizon, which may sound frivolous to suggest at first until you consider that's literally the only mandate and guidance the fed bases rate changes on: "data-driven forward guidance" is what the name suggests. Rate cuts thus have more to do with the change in trajectory than they do as nominal absolute values. Your data are emphasizing secondary factors, that's why the spreadsheet doesn't seem to illustrate anything meaningful. You ought to be comparing rate of change from moving averages, the time from the signal of raté changes occur before the rate changes, the delay you mentioned is in the order of 3-5 years and its all speculation before then because the rates could change back before the term ends. Long term debt like mortgages is smoothed out for that reason so duration is more important than the date of rate change too. Everything that's actually important is mentioned as cursory and you focus on the one thing that matters the least in that spreadsheet. I'm not sure why oyud even think that type of table would even be useful in the first place lol
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Dividends stabilize stock prices which is absolutely not at all irrelevant to anyone leveraging a portfolio's assets - bother borrow with the Div and lender who get the Div as security. That means you get your money back without hoping for price action or risk of a stupid human at the company wiping out the value of the stock. And then there's rolling over like compound interest if you apply that payment to another investment. There are tons of unique strategic benefits.
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