Bubbles Burst, from Stocks to Housing and Crypto
Stock markets are said to predict the future. If true, there’s a recession coming late this year.
The Toronto Housing Bubble has Burst
The only prices that are up are in the centre and on the subway line. The biggest drop is King, down 36%. A great spot to sit out the Pandemic: big lots and super large houses but an hour down a crowded highway to downtown.
Crypto Dives on the Greater Fool Theory
How’s this for a chart? Down 72% from its November peak.
There is a fool running for the leadership of Canada’s Conservative party who likes Crypto. Or liked.
Here is Bill Gates on Cryptocurrencies and Non-Fungible Tokens: “100% based on the sort of greater fool theory that someone is going to pay more for it than I do," Gates said during a TechCrunch conference this week.
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The Perils of Fashionable Investing
The Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the second largest pension fund in Canada, just blew $400-million on a cryptocurrency called Celsius. Celsius is now worthless, as the crypto world collapses.
Last year the Caisse sold all it oil assets. Oil stocks have gone through the roof. Oil is not fashionable. But is the object of the exercise to be able to virtue signal at annual meetings and Cocktail dînatoire, or make money for the citizens of Quebec.
Oil is Up and Gasoline Prices with it.
Rising Oil and Gas Prices Lift Russia’s Boat
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Answering Messages
“Please listen carefully as our menu options have changed.” Maybe the most annoying nine words in the modern world.
As if anyone remembers what the options used to be. Next is people asking after your health on email. “I hope this finds you well.” What else would you hope? Get to the point please.
Two Interesting Charts.
Where Millionaires are moving.
Not much fun in China and Russia; leaving war in Ukraine. Dumping Britain big time too. Could that be be Russians leaving? They love Australia and New Zealand. These aren’t billionaires, just plain millionaires, with liquid assets— no housing or art included— of a million US$.
World Inflation
This is taken from a Canadian perspective. Turkey is a bit of a mess.
Essay of the Week
The Chindits were British Special Forces who fought the Japanese in Burma during the Second World War. There were 182 Victoria Crosses awarded in the Second World War; four of them went to members of the small force known as the Chindits, named after the word for lion in Burmese, who fought over the Chindwin River in Burma.
On December 29th 1942, Brigadier Orde Wingate handed the officers of the original 77th Brigade the following words of wisdom and advice to take with them into Burma. This document was found among the war papers of Lieutenant John Murray Kerr, formerly of the Welsh Regiment and an officer with 5 Column on Operation Longcloth in 1943.
Secret
77th Indian Infantry Brigade Maxims for all Officers
The Chindwin is your Jordan, once crossed there is no re-crossing. The exit from Burma is via Rangoon. Success in operations depends on the perfecting of an exact and well-conducted drill for every procedure. Our reply to noise is silence.
When in doubt, do not fire.
Never await the enemy's blow, evade it.
Fight when surprise has been gained. When surprise is lost at the outset, break off the action and come again.
Security is gained by intelligence, good dispersal procedure and counter attack. Thus all depends on good guerrilla procedure plus careful drill. Read and then re-read ‘Security in bivouac.’
Always maintain a margin of strength for a time of need. It is the reserve of energy that saves from disaster that gives the weight required for victory.
Times of darkness, of rain, mist and storm, these are our times of achievement.
Never retrace your steps.
The movement of the column must be unpredictable, even for it's own members.
Never bivouac within three miles of a motor road or waterway. Three miles of good forest will give the same protection as ten miles of open country.
Use every weapon and every man to capacity. It is their combined and simultaneous employment that gives strength. Work together and rest together.
Speed should be the result, not of fear and confusion, but of superior knowledge, planning and drill. Intelligence is useless unless it is passed on. Use your W/T (radio) to capacity; it is your greatest weapon. See that your men think the same of the situation as you do. For this, constant talks and explanations will be necessary.
If possible, never keep serious casualties with the Column. Spend your cash.
The following is an obituary of Major Mike Dibben, Chindit, which I wrote for the National Post in 1999. I knew him. He hired me as Press Aide at Expo 67, the World’s Fair in Montreal. He changed my life. It was the reason I started work for the CBC in March of 1968, a lucky break for someone with little experience.
Major Mike Dibben, who fought for three armies -- the Indian, British and Canadian -- and was part of Colonel Wingate's long- range penetration campaign, a dangerous guerrilla action behind Japanese lines in Burma, has died aged 79.
An English public schoolboy straight from a John le Carre novel, he spent the height of the Cold War as an intelligence officer in central Europe and fought in Korea.
Following his life of adventure, he worked for a couple of decades in the Canadian civil service, where the only battles to be fought and won were on the field of office politics. It was something he was never much good at. He was not trained to be a Yes man.
Kenneth Michael Dibben was born in Hastings, England, on Sept. 16, 1919. His birth came just before his mother was about to board a ship for India, where her husband, Lieutenant-Colonel Herbert Charles Dibben, was chief veterinarian for the British Indian Army.
Mike, as he was always known, was sent back to school in England at Tonbridge as a young boy.
In 1939, he went to Sandhurst, the British military academy, and then directly into the army. Like his father, he went into the Indian Army and straight away was a company commander with the Gurkhas, a crack regiment of Nepalese soldiers, famous for their curved knives, called Kukri, which legend says they only remove from the scabbard to draw blood. They were said to even nick themselves on the finger if the knife was out, rather than break with tradition.
After the Japanese entered the war against the Americans and the British in 1941, the morale of the British Indian Army was low, following the humiliating British defeats at Hong Kong and Singapore.
The Japanese soldiers were thought to be superior and unbeatable.
Colonel Orde Wingate was an unorthodox British officer and persuaded the army to let him lead troops in long-range penetrations behind the enemy lines.
His men were called Chindits, after a mythical dragon which was sewn into their badges. Maj. Dibben was one of the 3,000 or so men who went to live and fight in the jungle.
He was in the second group to move behind Japanese lines in Burma in October, 1944. It was the monsoon season and the soldiers seldom had a warm bed. Their job was to disrupt life for the Japanese, cutting supply lines, blowing up stores of ammunition and anything else they could find, and killing Japanese soldiers in sniper attacks in what were known as firefights in Vietnam: short, bloody encounters in the jungle.
Maj. Dibben was wounded with shrapnel in Burma as well as suffering from diseases of the tropics. There was a camp for the sick and wounded at Lake Indawgyi, "15 miles long and three miles wide," said the pilot who helped supply the troops from the air.
Maj. Dibben arrived at the lakeside camp with malaria, jaundice, and dysentery. He refused to be flown out. He recovered in two weeks, and went back into the jungle.
"The last time I saw Mike he was walking though the jungle leading a column of about 40 walking wounded on their way to headquarters," said Squadron Leader R.J. (Chesty) Jennings of the RAF, who won a Military Cross -- almost unheard of for an air force man -- for his part in airlifting soldiers from the isolated lake using two Sunderland flying boats, code named Bert and Daisy.
He remembers how Maj. Dibben guarded a narrow mountain pass to protect the base from Japanese attack.
Col. Wingate's long-range penetration was a limited success in strategic terms, but it raised the morale of Indian and British troops, and lowered that of the Japanese.
Toward the end of the war, Maj. Dibben was captured by the Japanese and spent time in a harsh prisoner of war camp. One of his fellow prisoners was James Clavell, the novelist. Legend has it that Maj. Dibben allowed himself to be captured as part of an elaborate intelligence operation that involved shielding the PoW camps from RAF bombers.
He was mentioned in dispatches for his actions in Burma.
After the war, Maj. Dibben stayed in the Indian army with the Gurkhas.
One operation took them to the Dutch East Indies, which Holland had retaken from the Japanese but which was soon to become the country of Indonesia under Sukarno.
On his return to England in 1948, Maj. Dibben was bored with peacetime duties. He found languages easy enough to learn; he already spoke French, Hindi, Nepalese, and Ghurkali. His research showed there was only one officer in the British Army who understood Hungarian, at a time when Hungary was a satellite of the Soviet bloc.
He enrolled in London University and studied Hungarian. He soon discovered why there were few Hungarian speakers. It is said to be the most difficult European language for an English speaker to master. He qualified as an interpreter, and then as a spy.
Maj. Dibben was posted to Vienna, where he worked with military intelligence, translating Hungarian papers and radio broadcasts. Then he moved to the British Legation in Budapest, where he was head of the Hungarian Press Section. The press credit on the his curriculum vitae would come in handy in his civilian career.
The connection to Canada came during the Korean War. First, Maj. Dibben had married in Canada. The senior Canadian officers liked the look of Maj. Dibben, and he was recruited into Canadian Army Intelligence. On Nov. 7, 1952, he joined his third army, slipping in rank one notch for the privilege.
After Korea, Maj. Dibben served in Canada, then was based at Soest in Germany from 1957 to 1962. One of his fellow officers, General Charles Belzile -- once head of Mobile Command, the army's top soldier -- recalls that Maj. Dibben was top flight trainer. "People were in awe of his experience in the Indian and British armies. He didn't have to tell anyone he was in command. They knew it."
He retired from the Canadian Army in 1965 with the rank of major, though he still received letters from his Gurkha soldiers addressed to Lieutenant-Colonel Dibben, a temporary rank he held during the war.
Expo 67 was Maj. Dibben's first good job once he left the army. He was in charge of press, radio, and TV services, which meant making sure reporters from around the world were fed the right message. A large man, almost 6 feet, 4 inches tall, Maj. Dibben was an impressive figure at press briefings. Rumours of his background in espionage always lent him a glamorous air with the international press corps.
Later he moved to Ottawa to work in public relations for the federal government in Indian affairs, public works and the Export Development Corporation. For many years, his mentor in Ottawa was the late John Macdonald, the dynamic white-haired mandarin -- a powerhouse in Ottawa during the Trudeau era -- who enjoyed Maj. Dibben's style of plain speaking.
But Maj. Dibben once gave an honest answer to a young assistant of a cabinet minister who, unlike Mr. Macdonald, did not appreciate the blunt truth. He found himself moving boxes out of his office while he awaited his next assignment.
Maj. Dibben was married twice. First to Hope Davidson in 1950. They had two daughters, Pamela and Katherine, and a son, Wayne. He married a second time, Margaret King, in 1987.
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