Another reason to loathe Tim Horton’s, if you needed it — it’s the one kicking up the biggest fuss about the new packaging by-laws the City of Toronto plans. Timmy Ho’s refuses to change its cup to one of the corn-based, biodegradable versions you can get at your local granola-organic coffee outlet, or, in fact,continue reading
Dalton48 Archives
Beige and brown
I found this profoundly depressing, coming just weeks after an election that confirmed Canadian complacency and Canadian democracy have a strong negative correlation: Tim Hortons serves up national identity, researcher finds [St. Francis Xavier Professor] Cormack believes much of the mystique is owed to the “True Stories” ads starring real Canadians that started in thecontinue reading
Good timing
Feeling poorer after checking your accounts online? Wondering how the five dog grooming businesses in your neighbourhood will fare during the recession? Well, here’s something else that will make you an adherent of the new austerity: the updated property assessments for 2008 will be mailed to old City of Toronto addresses the week of Octobercontinue reading
JK Galbraith said it best
From The Great Crash, cited in today’s Globe: “Always when markets are in trouble, the phrases are the same: ‘The economic situation is fundamentally sound’ or simply ‘The fundamentals are good.’ “All who hear these words should know that something is wrong.”
There go the oil sands
Via Naked Capitalism, an interesting outlook for oil demand from Oppenheimer. Most important for Western Canada’s oil sands production is this assessment: We don’t expect OPEC to aggressively defend oil prices above $60/b, since higher prices slow economic and demand growth, which are not in OPEC’s best interests. Could oil fall to $60? Well… Givencontinue reading
PMSH, market analyst
Secular bear market? Not according to our Prime Minister, who, echoing the sage advice of W. those many years ago, urges you all to get out there and buy something. “I think there’s probably a lot of great buying opportunities emerging in the stock market as a consequence of all this panic.”
“The financial planet is in total crisis”
That’s the comforting assessment of a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council. Having spent much of last fall and this spring following the credit crisis, and trying to picture the changes it could bring about, I find myself oddly unmotivated to write about it now that, in many ways, the worst case scenariocontinue reading
And now, a word from our spammers
SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR URGENT BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP DEAR AMERICAN: I NEED TO ASK YOU TO SUPPORT AN URGENT SECRET BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP WITH A TRANSFER OF FUNDS OF GREAT MAGNITUDE. I AM MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY OF THE REPUBLIC OF AMERICA. MY COUNTRY HAS HAD CRISIS THAT HAS CAUSED THE NEED FOR LARGE TRANSFER OF FUNDS OFcontinue reading
From the office of the Fearless Leader
Full credit where credit is due — hackers and spammers sometimes do good work. An e-mail sent to a PMO media distribution list, purporting to come from we’re-better-off-with Harper: from Stephen Harper to ALLNEWS_E@lserv.pmo-cpm.gc.ca date Sun, Sep 21, 2008 at 3:34 PM subject Why you shouldn’t fear me Hi The Average Canadian, Stephen Harper wantedcontinue reading
It’s the shorts!
Oh yeah, this is sure to restore confidence in British financial stocks (emphasis added): Britain bans short-selling of financial stocks By Steve Goldstein Last update: 1:52 p.m. EDT Sept. 18, 2008 LONDON (MarketWatch) — Britain’s Financial Services Authority on Thursday banned short-selling of financial stocks and prohibited any increase in new bearish positions in thecontinue reading