5833 replies to this topic

[spanky123]

The limiting rules, known as capital constraints, are established by Canada’s banking regulator in a set of guidelines.

 

And they have to raise the money to meet their capital requirements. 

[dasmo]

And they have to raise the money to meet their capital requirements. 

Only a fraction. 10%ish. 

 

I am extremely open to learning because it is almost impossible to have it explained clearly. So if you got some material lay it on me. I am not a banker so I only think I know this but I have read about it over the last number of years after all the BS about money printing after the Financial crisis.  

Edited by dasmo, 11 January 2023 - 04:30 PM.

[dasmo]

This is why it's "created" money. It didn't exist before. We make money in Canada via the banks lending what they don't have. "the majority of money in the Canadian economy is created within the private banking system every time banks extend new loans like mortgages"

Edited by dasmo, 11 January 2023 - 04:24 PM.

[LJ]

Bring in way over a half million immigrants when there is a shortage of housing to start with is also not a lot of help.

The government was advised to do that by McKinsey...

 

From First Reading

 

Canadian government debt at both the provincial and federal levels has more than doubled in the last 15 years, according to a new tally by the Fraser Institute. Add it all up, and Canada’s combined government debt is now roughly on par with our annual GDP. (Fraser Institute graphic)

 

TOP STORY

 

This week, Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre singled-out a consultancy firm – McKinsey & Co. – as evidence of a managerial rot at the core of Canadian politics.

 

In a press conference, Poilievre said Canadians need to know “what influence McKinsey has had in our government” before calling for an official inquiry into the firm's Canadian operations — a proposal that was immediately endorsed by both the NDP and the Bloc Québécois.

 

The spur for Poilievre’s statement was a recent investigative report from Radio-Canada finding that the Trudeau government had spent $66 million on sole-sourced McKinsey contracts since coming to power in 2015.

 

McKinsey & Co. won the occasional commission during nine years of Conservative governance, but under the Liberals McKinsey contracts have “exploded” by a factor of 30, according to Radio-Canada. This is particularly true at Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, where insiders have fingered McKinsey with designing the Trudeau government’s policy of dramatically ramping up immigration to unprecedented levels.

 

And McKinsey’s influence hasn’t been limited to the federal level. The CAQ government of Quebec recently spent $6.6 million to have McKinsey shape their COVID-19 response — which became notable as one of the most strict on the continent. In that case, too, revelations of McKinsey influence spurred opposition calls for an official inquiry into the consultancy’s role in quietly drafting policy and reports that “carried the logo of the government of Quebec.”

 

This is far from the first time that McKinsey has faced a nation’s scorn for allegedly wielding an opaque and outsized influence in the operations of state.

 

McKinsey is currently the subject of a criminal probe in France on charges that they allegedly violated French campaign laws and played an unlawful role in the country’s 2017 and 2022 presidential elections.

 

The probe has sparked a bit of a national reckoning in France as ministers with the government of President Emmanuel Macron admit they have become too dependent on running the government via outside consultancies, rather than the more transparent route of doing things via the civil service.

 

“I willingly recognize it, and I think that we have gone too far," French Economy and Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in a November mea culpa broadcast on French TV.

 

In September, McKinsey & Co. was hit with criminal charges in South Africa for its alleged role in a massive corruption scandal involving the country’s railway network. As a 2017 report in The Economist noted, given McKinsey’s typical strategy of staying discrete and behind-the-scenes, it was “unused” to the avalanche of popular scorn generated by its activities in South Africa.

 

But the South African fiasco was but the first instance in a cascade of bad press to hit the consultancy in recent years.

 

McKinsey similarly expressed surprise in 2018 when it prepared a report on social media usage for the Saudi Arabian government — only for that report to be used in the targeting and arrest of dissidents. “We are horrified by the possibility, however remote, that it could have been misused in any way,” said the firm in a statement at the time.

 

In February 2021, McKinsey and Co. inked a $600 million settlement with U.S. authorities over charges that the firm helped design an aggressive marketing strategy for OxyContin, a drug whose over-prescription spawned the current opioid crisis. “They were part of a machine that disrupted, in fact destroyed, lives and families in America,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said at the time. “Today we hold McKinsey to account.”

 

In November that year, a McKinsey partner was hit with criminal charges in the U.S. for insider trading. Puneet Dikshit was accused of unlawfully generating $450,000 in profits by buying up shares of a major fintech firm on the eve of its $2.2 billion acquisition by Goldman Sachs.

 

Founded in 1926, McKinsey & Co. now runs a network of 30,000 employees operating in more than 60 countries. Famed for an extremely rigorous hiring policy that prioritizes a Harvard education above all, McKinsey has often been seen as the standard-bearers for a kind of top-down technocratic management that has already wielded profound impacts in the corporate world.

 

When McKinsey Comes to Town — a 2022 exposé on the company by two New York Times reporters — puts the firm at the centre of everything from the meteoric increase in CEO pay to the entrenchment of Big Tobacco in the 1950s. More recently, McKinsey research is behind a major corporate trend to increase profitability by investing in “diversity.”

 

One through-line in McKinsey controversies is that the company is able to sell management strategies that appeal to politicians or top-level executives, but have dubious impacts on the ground.

 

In 2019, a ProPublica report revealed that authorities in New York spent $27.5 million on a high-minded McKinsey proposal to reduce violence in its prisons — only for violence to get much worse. McKinsey, notably, got the contract despite no experience in managing prisons.

 

The same charge has been levelled at McKinsey’s increasingly ubiquitous influence in the world of global public health. “The professionalized consulting industry … send (health) ‘experts’ to low- and middle-income countries to offer ‘technical assistance’ when they might know little about the countries they are advising or the problems they are trying to fix,” wrote McGill University epidemiologist Madhukar Pai in 2019.

 

The Trudeau government’s links to McKinsey seem to be particularly close if only for the fact that they didn’t limit themselves to contracts, and ended up hiring one of the consultancy’s most influential executives.

 

Dominic Barton spent a decade as McKinsey’s global managing director before he left in 2018 and took up a job as Canada’s ambassador to China — a position he’d leave two years later amid accusations that he’d been too cozy with Beijing.

[LJ]

Don’t forget, the feds are making life easier for the little guy. The stress test, crazily fast rising interest rates, inability to use stated incomes for self-employed people, an out of balance housing supply relative to growth and carbon taxation trickling down to every facet of home building are just another way the government is working for you.

Canada - we got your back. 

[Mike K.]

Any link between McKinsey and SNC Lavalin?

[dasmo]

And just to add to that….

As a strategic partner to the World Economic Forum, McKinsey will engage with Davos 2023 participants in constructive, forward-looking dialogues and identify impact-oriented solutions that will contribute to a better world, focused on sustainable inclusive growth.



https://www.mckinsey...-forum/overview

[Mike K.]

Interesting.

This is quite the web that’s being spun here.

And whatever is happening in France should probably be paid attention to by Canadian journalists, by the sound of it.

[Victoria Watcher]

“This fund will allow non-profits to secure older rental buildings and protect vulnerable renters from speculators who can drive up rents and evict tenants who have lived there for years,” said Eby. “We expect the fund to protect renters in thousands of affordable units.”

 

There were 669,450 rental households in B.C. in 2021, according to Census figures — about one-third of all B.C. households.

 

The premier criticized the “predatory model” used by international corporations to buy rental buildings as investments, which leads to evictions and rent hikes that can lead to homelessness, with the result that families, seniors and vulnerable people struggle to stay in their own communities.

 

“There is no feeling worse than waking up in the morning and seeing a for sale sign on the front lawn of the building that you live in,” said Eby, “because it opens up a whole question about whether you’re going to be able to stay in your home.”

 

Across Canada, rental buildings are often purchased by speculators and large corporations, real-estate investment trusts, called REITs for instance, and redeveloped so as to evict existing tenants and allow the trusts to hike the rents or sell the units.

 

___________________

 

Pacifica Housing head Ibarra, whose organization is part of the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association, said only large investment firms typically have the financial capacity to acquire rental buildings, often turning them into luxury condos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So there are 670,000 rental units in BC.  Somewhere in another thread I said this fund would simply change the ownership of about 1,250 units.  Is that worth spending $500M on?

 

I've got a better idea.  Why not incentivize labour force participation in this province?  That way, more people will be working, making more money, paying their own way for housing and/or better housing, and also contributing income taxes to the province.

 

 

https://www.statista...da-by-province/

 

I know, it's a novel idea.

 

Now, I agree it's hard to spin that into good news headlines.  How would this go over:

 

 

 

 

BC Government taking bold steps today to make more people work, and those already working, work longer hours

 

Programs include incentives for teenagers, women, single parents, and the disabled to work much more

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 13 January 2023 - 06:00 AM.

[Mike K.]

Name one rental building that was bought in Victoria, and the land converted to luxury condos. Just one.

Pacifica Housing head Ibarra, whose organization is part of the B.C. Non-Profit Housing Association, said only large investment firms typically have the financial capacity to acquire rental buildings, often turning them into luxury condos.

[Victoria Watcher]

Yes, I meant to comment on that fib.

[Victoria Watcher]

Name one rental building that was bought in Victoria, and the land converted to luxury condos. Just one.
 

 

That James Bay bnb place.  We talked about it in another thread.

[dasmo]

Guys, you’re not relying on the evidence of your eyes and ears are you?
Perhaps it’s time to visit the Peterson reeducation camp.

[Mike K.]

It’s also a not true, that “typically” “only large investment firms” but older rental stock. In Victoria, it’s not the case. There is an even mix of small developers and large institutions buying old rental properties. You don’t have to be a giant corporation, to buy a $10 million building. The big guys, in fact, prefer to buy existing rental stock, which can be renovated, and under-used land used for the construction of new rental stock.

How many rental buildings has Starlight knocked down?

How many rental buildings has Reliance knocked down?

How about Chard?

Bosa?

Concert?

In fact, in Victoria, it’s the smaller players that buy old stock, and knock it down to build new, more often than the large players do. Aryze, Urban Core, Groupe Denux, and long-time owners of existing properties looking to redevelop their properties come to mind more than the big corporations.

[Mike K.]

That James Bay bnb place. We talked about it in another thread.

A) that’s a couple of units
B) bnb is not rental housing
C) those aren’t luxury condos. They’re just refinished suites

[Mike K.]

Now, guess what the MMHI policy is going to do? It is going to create a wholesale incentive for small developers to buy affordable SFDs with suites, for the purposes of redeveloping the properties into more expensive rentals or ownership units.

The tear down of old apartments in Victoria is not a common thing. It rarely happens, and it’s even more rare at the hands of large corporations. The MMHI policy by design is created for the sole purpose of replacing older, more affordable housing stock with new, expensive housing stock.

I’m not against the policy as a policy. But I am against the political process being dishonest about its impacts.

[Ismo07]

Now, guess what the MMHI policy is going to do? It is going to create a wholesale incentive for small developers to buy affordable SFDs with suites, for the purposes of redeveloping the properties into more expensive rentals or ownership units.

The tear down of old apartments in Victoria is not a common thing. It rarely happens, and it’s even more rare at the hands of large corporations. The MMHI policy by design is created for the sole purpose of replacing older, more affordable housing stock with new, expensive housing stock.

I’m not against the policy as a policy. But I am against the political process being dishonest about its impacts.

 

That was just a quote from a non-profit and there is potential of that I suppose.  The main issue and fear that the politics speaks to is the rampant increase of rents... Booting people out to do renovations and then putting those suite on the rental market for much more than the previous rates.  This we have seen and continue to I guess.

[Mike K.]

The rampant increase in rents isn’t a reflection of the rampant increase in taxation, the cost of doing business, maintenance costs and real-estate costs?

It’s just pulled from thin air, is what you mean? The renovation costs are free, in other words?

[Ismo07]

The rampant increase in rents isn’t a reflection of the rampant increase in taxation, the cost of doing business, maintenance costs and real-estate costs?

It’s just pulled from thin air, is what you mean? The renovation costs are free, in other words?

 

Someone has rented a unit for $1,200 for 10 years, gets moved out cause a large company bought the 56 unit building and less than a year later rents the unit for $2,200 with new flooring, kitchen, bathroom and paint....  I'm not sure what you mean by out of thin air.

 

No increase in rents is due to capacity and people needing places to live.  They are more than the costs, which fine, rent something for what you can get, it's the market.  If people started moving away in a timely manner you would see rents drop.

Edited by Ismo07, 13 January 2023 - 08:37 AM.

[Mike K.]

Anything’s possible when you’re making up numbers, though.

Where is this 56-unit building that increased its rental rates by 85% in under a year?