Retired data analyst. Enjoy watching the EPL and NFL. Have the travel bug. Now a grandfather. UNB alumni.
Moncton, New Brunswick
Joined December 2008
- Tweets12.9K
- Following284
- Followers1.2K
- Likes337K
The alternate reality where the public sector, upper middle income private sector and their retirees live.
The majority of New Brunswickers will not see themselves in the Holt Government’s Throne Speech and will ask in what alternate reality is being told this afternoon. #nbpoli
cbc.ca/news/canada/new-bruns…
Strangely this issue didn’t get much attention in the Throne speech. How can you not find housing with all the apartments being built? @susanholt
New Brunswick is feeling the consequences but its politicians are not willing to have honest conversations with us. @DanielAllainNB will you hold the honest conversation?
🇨🇦 Canada's Economic Crisis Began in 1971. We Are Only Now Beginning to Feel the Consequences.
Canada's demographic challenge began when fertility fell below replacement levels in the early 1970s.
For decades, expanding credit, rising asset prices, immigration and financialization helped conceal the structural weaknesses developing in the real economy.
Now, as the credit supercycle begins to unwind, those weaknesses are becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
The next challenge arrives in the 2030s.
The demographic model suggests that Canada's natural population growth—births minus deaths—turns negative around 2032, while the working-age population continues to shrink relative to the population it must support.
Fewer workers per dependent. Greater fiscal pressure. Slower potential growth.
Canada cannot borrow its way out of a demographic problem indefinitely.
The solution is not simply more people or more debt. It is greater productivity, capital investment, automation and technological innovation.
History is clear, it won't be by choice, and popular uprising forces that change as the FIRE economy contracts.
We know it as Economic Winter.
Homes in most of New Brunswick are priced far outside what an income can carry as debt. Prices need to come down and we seniors need to understand this as we move to sell.
🚨 Canada’s Housing Market May Be Starting Its Second Leg Down.
This is an equal-weighted aggregate of the 9 provincial HPI series available in CREA’s national workbook.
The 1-year ROC is barely positive, while 3-month momentum has turned negative.
That suggests the aggregate may be starting a second leg down.
Higher rates continue to pressure affordability.
Unless real incomes rise rapidly, home prices should remain under downward pressure.
This coincides with the global peak in the 18.6 Year Cycles, Canada's Kuznets's Cycle peaked in 2022.
Is the @susanholt government listening? Moncton, Saint John, and Fredericton will do better at population maintenance as we draw in rural residents and immigrants. We now lose to deaths the population of the City of Dieppe every 4 years.
Canada has not produced enough children to replace its population since 1972. Nothing suggests a sustained reversal. Without immigration, population decline eventually becomes unavoidable. But using immigration primarily to inflate headline GDP will not guarantee higher living standards. The alternative? A productivity revolution. Japan, China and South Korea are investing heavily in robotics and automation. Canada must do the same. The future of prosperity is not simply more people. It is greater productive output per person.
We await the court details, but here’s what happens when you try and invest in New Brunswick. It’s not exactly welcoming.
cbc.ca/news/canada/new-bruns…
So New Brunswick may have 10 of these data centres, yet no one is talking about our water or where the electricity is coming from. Some communities will rue the day they approved these ecological disasters.
🚨 WOW. A resident in Indiana sounds the alarm about a new data center project:
“They're going to pull out 34 MILLION gallons a day for their cooling, and then they're going to dump 22 MILLION gallons a day of wastewater... back into the river DAILY.”
She says the community's water is ALREADY contaminated with dangerous substances.
WATCH MORE: open.substack.com/pub/meidas…
Higher profits can only come from higher revenue, and or a reduction in costs. What are the details on where these additional profits are coming from? Let’s cut to the chase, they need much higher power rates, 5.5% won’t do it.
“Expected to” is not shall or will. It’s a big maybe. Let’s see the results when the expansion opens.
You cannot grow your economy on the back of rising food insecurity, New Brunswick’s, @susanholt believes otherwise as funding continues to what has become the food bank industry. Growth Through Poverty should be on our license plates.
The Paradox of Canadian Prosperity (Phantom Wealth)
Canada experienced one of the greatest real estate and credit booms in its history, yet one in four households now struggles with food insecurity.
In 2024, approximately 10 million Canadians (25.5%) living in the ten provinces experienced household food insecurity. In Toronto, the figure was 24.7% of households.
These statistics expose a critical distinction between rising asset wealth and genuine economic prosperity.
For decades, expanding credit inflated real estate valuations, enriching asset owners on paper while making housing increasingly unaffordable for those dependent on wages.
The Economic LongWave interpretation is that financialization can create the illusion of widespread prosperity even as essential living costs consume a growing share of household incomes.
The growth in food insecurity does not, by itself, prove debt deflation has begun. But it demonstrates why asset prices and aggregate GDP are inadequate measures of economic well-being.
The great paradox: Canada became wealthier on paper while millions of Canadians became less economically secure.
Source: Daily Bread Food Bank and North York Harvest Food Bank, Who’s Hungry 2025, Figure 1, pp. 8–9.
A personal reflection.
I remember walking through Toronto in 2017, looking at the extraordinary real estate valuations and thinking to myself, this will end badly.
I spent 66 years of my life in this city. I love Toronto, and watching what has unfolded makes it difficult not to feel angry.
But after decades of studying economic cycles and managing capital, I've learned that I must look beyond the anger and understand the madness of crowds, the power of social mood, and the persistent economic amnesia of human nature.
Every generation convinces itself that this time is different. Every credit mania creates its own justifications. And every generation eventually rediscovers lessons that history has already taught us.
The tragedy isn't that we don't know how these manias end. It's that we repeatedly convince ourselves they won't.
If correct, then not much of @susanholt government extra $1.7 billion debt has made its way to ambulance services. We’d ask the Minister but they aren’t available for comment.
Home prices need to decline much further to close the income-home price gap. This is just the start.
Try explaining this to the @susanholt government which continues to expand the food bank system while suppressing wages. This is New Brunswick, food banks as a growth industry.
Homes are for living in, they are not a lottery ticket.
ANCIENT GREECE HAD A DEBT CRISIS. 2,600 YEARS LATER, ARE WE HEADING TOWARD THE SAME SOLUTION?
In 594 BC, Athens faced a severe debt crisis. Farmers lost their land, creditors demanded repayment, and some citizens were forced into debt bondage.
Solon introduced the Seisachtheia “shaking off the burdens” cancelling certain debts and freeing citizens from debt bondage.
Sound familiar?
Today, decades of credit expansion have inflated real estate values and left households carrying enormous mortgage obligations.
What happens when property values collapse 30–50%, but the debt remains?
❄️ Debt Deflation.
A modern Seisachtheia could involve mortgage principal write-downs, debt restructuring and bank recapitalization.
But debt forgiveness does not eliminate the losses. It transfers them to banks, investors, governments or taxpayers.
The lesson from 2,600 years of history: When debt becomes too large for the underlying economy to support, something must give.
The question is not whether unsustainable debts will be restructured, defaulted upon or otherwise resolved.
The question is WHO absorbs the losses.
No surprise New Brunswick is last. The government is focused on seniors health care to the detriment of our youth and families. It is literally trying to build an economy based on seniors and food banks. Mexico north we are.
10 data centres. We don’t have the power or water to support these things. Unfortunately, the province and residents will only realize this after we’ve lost our money and run up more debt.
You can’t provide safety until you house those who are not housed, and ensure they have access to the services they need. Where’s your plan - and stop calling the Province, it’s your city, deal with it.
Where is the “surplus” power coming from? Fiction. Who is paying for this data centre? At least the rest of us won’t be choking on diesel fumes when those generators kick in. Once again we’re chasing a Ponzi scheme, once again we’re the suckers.
Michael Zinck retweeted
Foreign direct investment, also known as investment attraction is all but non existent in NB in terms of results. It’s been broken for years and I see nothing coming that will change let alone achieve the growth targets the government have set for themselves. #nbpoli
Will the rate hikes address paying down current debt and provide enough revenue to support borrowing for upgrades and refurbishments, because that’s what they need to do.
New Brunswick utility is proposing rate hikes over next three years
globalnews.ca/news/12091467/…
