Mock Turtle

Wikipedia:

Starting with the execution of John Boyd in January 1908, [[hanging]]s at the Don took place in an indoor chamber, which was a converted washroom, at the northeast corner of the old building. Previously, condemned men had been hanged on an outdoor scaffold in the jail yard.

The Globe:

1908

John Boyd is the first prisoner hanged in a new indoor chamber, converted from a washroom. Until then, hangings were done on an outdoor scaffold in the prison yard.

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In 1989, I was glued to the television for weeks watching the pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square make their peaceful case for democracy. The entire world could watch because of the footage that was broadcast.

In Burma, foreign journalists are banned. In 1988 information about the junta’s crackdown was limited, and verbal. But thanks to the internet, which even the most oppressive of regimes don’t quite seem to be able to quash, ordinary citizens in Rangoon are sending updates, photos, and videos to the world through sites like:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7011884.stm

There may not be many more reports making it out of the country, as the regime moves to limit bandwidth further, so read while you can.

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• Would-be car buyers launch a class action suit claiming sticker prices on Canadian cars are illegal. One analyst points out that when the C$ was at US$0.65 — not so very long ago — prices here were actually lower and no one was complaining.
• What the plaintiffs ignore is that Canada is a different country than the U.S., with a population smaller than California’s. (Are the class action participants not getting the same junk mail from the Council of Canadians I am talking up Canada’s sovereignty? Lucky them.) There’s no reason whatsoever that items should be sold at the same price on both sides of the border, as a distributor or retailer may well need to apply a much greater mark up to make a comparable, or any, profit in the Canadian market.
• A simple glance at a price tag in Mexx or Zara shows how prices differ from one country to another in the Eurozone — and they’re even using the same currency.
• 2 of the 4 plaintiffs bought pricey SUVs:

• Daniel Berkovits leased a Jeep Grand Cherokee, which, under the lease, had a sales price of $58,645 (Canadian), when Chrysler was advertising it in the United States at less than $40,000 (U.S.).

• David Bain bought a GMC Yukon Denali at a sale price of $69,615 (Canadian) under the lease, when the advertised U.S. price was about $50,000 (U.S.).

•  If no one were willing to pay $70,000 for a Yukon Denali (Denali’s in Alaska, by the way… but I digress) in Canada, the prices might come down. Consumers have a lot of pricing power in the flagging auto market, and it doesn’t need to be legislated. But this lawsuit, like the endless assertions of collusion in the gasoline market, is based on a gut feeling that someone’s ripping the ”little guy” (driving a $70K SUV) off. Whether or not it’s true is immaterial.

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More from the frontlines of C$ surge, aka the US$ collapse:

- I have to question the Star’s dollar headline on its front page today (check your local Star copy or box as it does not appear online). The story is fine, but it’s topped by the ubiquitous pic of a loonie and, in something like 36 point type:

98.64

Wow! Electrifying! Just 1.36 shy of par! Wait, wasn’t it 98.65 a week ago? Can’t remember… because that’s such an uninteresting number it could not possibly resonate in anyone’s head. 99.9 is kind of cool. 1.00 is what everyone has internalized already. But 98.64? Not worth the ink.

- Ever-curmudgeonly Andrew Coyne, who is back from a long break and has sadly removed the photo set of his long-ago Whistler ski trip from his blog, is as dismissive as one might hope about the hoopla, calling it “one of the media’s periodic fits of collective insanity.”

That the dollar is rising is newsworthy; that it has hit a 30-year high doubly so, though it is hardly grounds for self-congratulation — it is in large part the result of US economic weakness and the skyrocketing price of oil, neither of which is our doing.

- BMO Nesbitt Burns economist Doug Porter joins the fray, issuing a note further debunking CIBC’s assertion that the dollar’s rise has been keeping inflation in check. He points out that not only is *core* inflation higher in Canada than anywhere else in the developed world, but also:

Canadian CPI inflation for goods has been running on average 1% below its U.S. counterpart for the past three years. That’s a tidy sum for sure, but well below what one may have expected given the average increase of 8% annually in the currency over that time frame.

- And just a short note in defence of booksellers. Having worked both at a bookstore, and at a publisher and distributor, I can tell you that the pricing power of imported books lies mostly with the original publisher. If you buy a Random House book, for example, published by Random House New York, then the distributor, Random House Canada, buys copies of the book from RHNY. It also pays shipping, generally ground, occasionally air. The cost of the books is the list price (the one you see on your book) set by the publisher, less a discount. The invoice is for the books plus freight.

The bookstore, in turn, buys the books from the distributor at the list price less a discount. The standard is 40% for trade books (~45% for some new releases and back catalogue), 20% for books from university presses and textbooks, and 50% for some mass-market titles. The bookstore pays the shipping costs. The bookstore then sells the book to the customer at the list price.

If the publisher has set the Canadian price 25% higher than the US one, and both the Canadian distributor and the bookseller are charged list less discount for the books, it’s impossible for them to break even selling at the US price, since the margin, already small, must also pay for shipping, labour, rent, electricity and marketing.

The price of the book is set long before the book goes to press based on a profit/loss estimate using some forecast of foreign exchange. In this case, this means severely outdated prices on books, which most, though not all, publishers are choosing to hold to even though their costs have now changed. It’s not that hard to put a sticker over the printed price and relabel it — this happens all the time. But in order for everyone to continue to profit from selling books, this is something that has to be initiated by the publisher, not the distributor or the bookseller.

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While I’m still on my Hamilton kick (‘It’s 905!’/'But so authentic!’), I’m embarrassed to say that I missed this entirely:

MEC’s planned Burlington store, which I’m sure there’s a good business case for, is supposed to be a model of environmental design …

“Sustainability is a driving force at MEC, and the Burlington store will be developed to our rigorous green building standards,” said Robinson.

MEC plans to construct its greenest building to date and to meet at least the gold standard of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green-building rating system.

… sited in a desolate area of big-box retail around the 403/QEW junction which can only practically be reached by car. The other local attractions are a Wal-Mart, an Ikea, and a Pet Smart outlet, all swimming in the middle of their vast parking lots. Gory details here. The Toronto equivalent would be putting MEC at the 427 and QEW.

View Larger Map

The Raise the Hammer blog makes the case for downtown Hamilton at a site near City Hall (though claiming that “Hamilton’s downtown is on the cusp of greatness” is a stretch). That’s one option, though I’d be looking at ex-industrial sites in Dundas, or maybe the area across Main St. from McMaster.

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Woo-hoo! Parity at last! Where were you in 1976? Etc.

Except:

• we live in Ontario
• consumer prices aren’t budging
• plus, don’t know if you’d noticed, but housing and food prices, which represent a sizeable part of the average household budget, are rising.

Core inflation is actually a bit softer — you know, the type that doesn’t include everyday purchases like gas (for some) or food. This is due to the rise of the C$, according to CIBC:

A stronger Canadian dollar is helping the Bank of Canada achieve its primary objective: returning core inflation to the middle of its 1%-to-3% target range. We’re not there yet, mind you, with core inflation holding above the 2% threshold for a twelfth straight month. But August data nonetheless took a further step in the central bank’s preferred direction, with the year-over-year rate for CPI-X easing a tick to 2.2%. 

Or maybe it’s not, says TD in a note entitled The Strong Canadian Dollar is No Longer an Ally in the Fight Against Inflation:

There has been much talk about the ability of the stronger Canadian dollar to augment the actions of the Bank of Canada in its fight against the elevated inflationary pressures that currently exist in the Canadian economy. This assertion, however, appears to be at odds with the empirical evidence.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

The TD note explains:

Using Canadian data between 1998 and 2007, we estimated various econometric models and found no statistically significant evidence of any pass-through [of currency appreciation to consumer prices] from movements in the Canadian dollar to consumer prices(1). In other words, the appreciating Canadian dollar has not had any significant impact on domestic consumer prices – and should impact it little in the coming months. Indeed, while our estimations suggest some pass-through in the short-run (though statistically insignificant), the impact completely washes out in the long run.

CIBC, meanwhile, turns to the car lot for justification for its thesis:

Returning the focus to core inflation, the Canadian dollar’s unprecedented ascent is helping to restrain the pace of price increases. As steamy as core inflation has been, think where it would be in the absence of near-60% currency appreciation over the past five years, a move that has materially cheapened imported goods, including autos, where the price of buying or leasing a new vehicle fell a further 1.8% in August.

Weak argument. There are other factors at work in the car business, such as: sliding sales among the Big 3, leading to  non-stop loss-leader deals that move the entire auto market lower, and a reliance on financing arms to make money, now threatened by the credit crunch.

CIBC seems to be a little giddy at the loonie’s rise. An interview with Managing Director Avery Shenfeld on globeinvestor.com confirms the breathless excitement as he answers the question below just like an eager job applicant who uses the classic “what do you see as your biggest weakness?” question as an opportunity to flog a positive quality, like dogged determination,  or a constant need for self-improvement:

What are the biggest disadvantages [to the higher dollar]?

For consumers, this is nothing but a win, unless of course you lose your job because the businesses you work in is no longer competitive when paying you in a stronger currency.

Hmmm, you kind of lost me (and the entire export-oriented part of the economy) on the last part.

*Proposed title for a week-long segment on the dollar’s ascent in 2005; actual title going to air was the ridiculous “Flight of the Loonie”, complete with animated graphic.

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– is CBC Radio 1’s slogan at the moment, unless they’ve taken it off the air out of embarrassment – it’s hard to miss.

One the one hand, this is just truth in advertising – CBC Toronto, which serves all of south-central Ontario, at least in principle, has always been indifferent to the large parts of their listening area which you can’t get to on the subway. Simcoe County, for instance.

On the other hand, they’re presenting it as a good thing – hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue, and all that.

Which is why this is welcome news, though I’ll believe it when it happens – CBC Radio in Hamilton, like a Hamilton NHL franchise, has been on the list of unconsummated reasonable ideas for years. It was being discussed when I was in high school in the ’80s, listening to the Toronto traffic reports trudging to the bus on a rural sideroad, and it’s still being discussed.

Hamilton is too far from Toronto to be a true part of the megaglopolis, but too close to be a free-standing centre in its own right. It’s a big city in the shadow of a bigger one, which has always been a bit undignified. I will admit to moments when my favourite thing in Hamilton is the on-ramp to the Toronto-bound 403, but still.

If you defined the station’s news area as Hamilton/Niagara/Brant and the rural area west of that, there should be more than enough to keep everybody busy.

Actually, the Spectator’s obtuse response to the idea is one hint about why it’s needed. (Update: More here)

The CBC’s piety about The Regions (Favourite Winnipeg Intersections, anybody?) has never extended to regions of Ontario, for reasons I don’t understand.

They need a serious Barrie-based station, too, while we’re at it.

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…and another failure in the long list of failed online newspaper ventures.

From business headlines on CBS Marketwatch:

7:24[NYT] New York Times: Free access to Web content to start Wed.
7:23[NYT] New York Times to open up free access to online content
7:22[NYT] New York Times ends TimesSelect online service

Prepare for more liberal sprinklings of insight from economist extraordinaire Paul Krugman.

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SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Frustrated by one of the worst situations in air travel — passengers kept waiting in grounded, crowded aircraft for as much as 11 hours at a time — a consumer group is planning to stage a recreation of an extreme tarmac delay in the nation’s capital next week. p>

The expected participants, including an American Airlines pilot and a raft of congressional staff, will need patience. And a hardy stomach.

The protest’s organizers are planning to build a mock commercial aircraft that has seen its passengers’ patience and infrastructure wear thin after hours of idling. The 28-foot aircraft, really a long grey tent made to look like a plane, will be adorned by sounds of crying babies, sneezing customers and overflowing toilets.

However, it can’t be too realistic, according to Coalition for Airline Passengers’ Bill of Rights organizer Kate Hanni, “who worries some congressional representatives who have promised to attend the Wednesday protest won’t stick around if the staging is too real.”

To add to the realistic atmosphere I’d recommend some overhead lights that don’t work and scratchy sound systems built in as well.

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I’d be perfectly happy to never see it again, and apparently I’m not the only one. There’s a whole movement advocating its abolition.

I did not know that it originated with Microsoft Bob, but that explains a lot, doesn’t it?

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