WeneedLumme

What? He insisted that his AHL-out clause be honored early in the season when he had not played and was bringing his fitness level up to NHL standards. But once he was playing regularly, he was very useful. "his level of play wasn't good enough for our top six anymore" was not the way it was. I believe he was offered a 2 M/year one way contract, which he declined to go back home to play for his hometown team.

Or at least do what they did for a while, draft 18 year olds in the first round only, but draft 19+ in subsequent rounds.

You have that backwards. The banks' ideal scenario is to match up the term of the (fixed rate) mortgage with the term of the bond where they raised the money. Ie: borrow the money with a 5-year bond and then lend it out on a 5-year mortgage. That locks in their profit, minimizing their risk. While the yields of existing bonds do indeed fluctuate over time, their interest rates do not; those are fixed. The way the yields fluctuate is that the bonds are traded on a free market, so their market value/price fluctuates, changing the yield provided to the buyer by the (fixed) interest rate. The cost to the bond issuer/bank however does not change when the current market value of an existing bond changes.

Of course housing is much cheaper in small cities and towns than it is in Greater Vancouver. Stating otherwise is just silly. Most cities can expand in at least 3 directions, many in all four directions. Being able to expand in only one direction obviously limits the supply of land. With respect to Vancouver's zoning bylaws, Vancouver, like most civilized cities, plans for different uses in different areas. Wiping out the industrial landbase to make the city just a bedroom community is not considered extremely desirable by planners. And saying "purposely not zoning for enough density" is also silly. Why would you say that? Permitted densities and uses have been increasing over time as demand increases. Have you ever been to Yaletown, Granville Island, False Creek or Fairview Slopes? Do you know that when I was in school, those areas were filled with "rotting warehouses"? The city obviously does change zoning bylaws when demand for different uses changes. It sounds like you prefer the situation that exists in some US cities, where property owners can do almost whatever they want, which creates an ugly hodgepodge of random mixed uses. What exactly is "archaic" about Vancouver zoning bylaws?

Fixed rates have already risen substantially, in anticipation of further central bank rate increases. They are not that likely to increase much more. The rate increases we have already seen are slowing the economy/inflation, but it's like manoeuvering a big ship, steering inputs need some time to take effect. Everyone has to decide their own risk preferences, but locking in a mortgage right now for a long term is likely to feel like a bad choice within a couple of years.

That may be the case in some cities. But in Greater Vancouver our supply of land is constrained by mountains to the north, ocean to the west and the USA to the south.

His playoff stats look much better than his regular season stats. I wonder if he is a playoff warrior type. Here's hoping.

Obviously. But I was responding to his claim that wealthy immigrants do not contribute to our economy. Right now the objective is to weaken the economy, not to stimulate it.

I am happy for you. In that case, no doubt you will remember from the economic base analysis you learned when you were taking the urban land economics courses, that bringing money in from outside the area and spending it IN the local area creates economic activity through the multiplier effect. I know from first-hand experience that wealthy people who move here spend huge amounts of money in restaurants and miscellaneous local stores. The employees and owners of these businesses then have money to spend elsewhere in the local area, allowing the owners and staff of the other businesses to do the same. Even when the wealthy people buy expensive name-brand products, the local sales staff and merchants make substantial amounts of money from the sales, often totalling more than the manufacturer makes, money that gets recycled throughout the local economy. Choosing to assume that the huge amount of money that wealthy immigrants spend here all goes to offshore corporations and does not benefit the local area, sounds like willful ignorance when coming from someone with a B. Comm.

You seriously believe that people spending money on "non essential items" like clothes, jewelry, furniture and cars does not help the economy? How do you think they acquire those items? A wave of a magic wand, with no humans involved? I can only assume that your income is salary and comes from tax dollars, and that you have never studied any economics.

That is bad advice. Using one-size-fits-all rules for dramatically different types of assets is pretty much a guarantee of poor results. Good quality stocks can be expected to continue to rise substantially in value over time, year after year. Currencies on the other hand, generally do not, and are often range-bound. As I pointed out, anyone who bought USD's at any time in the past when our dollar was 0.90 USD or more was probably happy with their choice. Anyone who bought USD's when our dollar was in the 0.70 USD range or lower probably regrets their choice.

Depends on where our dollar was when you acquired the USD's. Cdn $ usually trades between about 70 cents US and par. When our dollar is closer to par, sure. But buying USD's when our dollar is anywhere near the bottom of that range, anywhere near 0.70 USD, there is a pretty good chance one would regret buying.

Until I see for myself, I think I will lean toward the very detailed opinion along with the named and dated opinions. I am guessing he is a good skater.

I was just chatting with a former colleague who is still in real estate. He has had recent sales that were arranged in the spring and just completed now that are worth 10 to 15% less than the selling price. The market peaked around February and prices have been sliding since, as rising mortgage rates choke off demand.

The bolded is supposed to prove something? Let's remember that in the full year he played, 2016-2017, he was a minus 7. And let's also remember that Hutton (-22), Edler (-20), Stecher (-16), Gudbranson (-14) and Larsen (-8) all had worse plus minuses on the blueline that year. Does that mean anything to you? Now that there is some context, does his plus minus still have significance to you?

I would assume that most of the expected 75 basis point increase has already been priced in to the 5 year fixed rate. They're not like variable rate mortgages where the rate will jump on the date the BoC makes the announcement. But yes, mortgage rates are expected to soon be above the stress test rates that many buyers qualified at, which creates a rather worrisome scenario.

Trillions have been wiped out of existence by the drops in the equity and crypto markets recently. And the trillions in equity in the China real estate market are evaporating even as we speak, much of it tied up in apartments that nobody wants to live in or buy, as the values continue to drop. And even if they could be sold, the China government is making it harder and harder to get money out of China. I believe that you are mistaken about trillions of dollars sitting around waiting to be invested in our real estate market, which is nowhere near as foreign-buyer-friendly as it was a decade ago. Demand for real estate (or almost anything else) is very much affected by price, which for real estate includes the price of money. Last year it was possible to get a 5-year fixed-term mortgage for as low as 1.8%. Now you are looking at well over 4%. Consequently the demand for real estate has dropped sharply and is almost certain to continue to drop as rates keep rising.

Back then we were in a nasty inflationary spiral caused partly by the quarter-century long post-war economic boom and partly by OPEC forcing up energy prices dramatically in the mid-70s. Inflation was higher pretty well every year through the 70s, but for the most part, except for fixed-income pensioners, healthy wage increases each year made most people feel pretty good about their financial situation (see: Money Illusion https://www.investopedia.com/terms/m/money_illusion.asp ). Due to the fact that increasing inflation was considered to be normal for years/decades and became embedded into our psyche, it was much more intractable then than I believe the current situation is. Now, much of inflation is being caused by shortages and supply chain kinks, and when those are resolved inflation is likely to drop back relatively painlessly.

Actually, the housing part you have backwards, our home prices have not tripled in the last decade, they have doubled, but they did triple in the decade from January 1971 to December 1980, doubling in 1980 alone. Inflation was much worse in the late 70s through 1980 than it has been so far in this cycle. The current high inflation rate we are now experiencing was considered to be pretty normal in the late 70s through 1980.

That's a bit excessively doom and gloom. A big part of our current inflation is due to shortages and the supply chain kinks and they are not permanent. The higher interest rates are already slowing the housing market which is a big economic driver as well as weakening the stock market, which is another big source of wealth/spending. And another huge source of this inflation, energy prices, are not likely to stay at/keep shooting past $120/bbl indefinitely. When they start coming down, they bring inflation down. It is true that it might require driving our economy into recession again to control inflation, as happened 40 years ago, but I don't believe that saying inflation is uncontrollable at this point is accurate.

I remember saying similar things in 1980, and again in 1994. By the time the third crash I experienced was approaching, in 2008, I wasn't saying them any more, but other people still were. The 2008-09 correction was a LOT more than 1-3%. It was more like 10-15%, but it did not last long; by the end of 2009 the market had recovered all the lost ground. BTW, in case we are talking about different things, I am talking about the Greater Vancouver market. This time, the situation is much more like the 1981 real estate crash. Extremely high inflation and a ridiculously hot/high real estate market, causing governments to raise interest rates to very high levels to choke off demand. The economy in general is interest rate sensitive, while the real estate market is probably the most sensitive sector due to the universal use of financial leverage. The 1981 crash dropped real estate prices sharply, and they did not recover to pre-crash levels for almost a decade. Don't be shocked if something more like that happens again, rather than the couple of years of flat markets you are expecting.

Yeah, they appear to have been hit worse than any other country in the world. Not a pleasant distinction.

The mortality rate is strongly affected by the amount of testing (ie: number of confirmed cases). In Mexico, for example, they hardly ever tested anybody unless they were practically on death's door, so their positivity rate was always way high, as was their mortality rate. What I consider more significant is the number of deaths per million in the population. At 2471 deaths/Million, Mexico has been hit pretty hard, while Italy for example was hit even harder with 2769/M but had a mortality rate of only 1.0% because they did large-scale testing.

Oh yeah, well ma preacher sez yew are awl goin to hell, abstenunce is thuh only way. Ah prooved it!

Drugs, sure, but of course a case of beer or a twentysixer of hard liquor would take a bit longer since they don't fit into a vendor's wallet or watch pocket as easily as chemicals do.