Hello Canadians! Australian here. Our shit is also fucked.
Its those fucking seppos.
Hello Canadians! Australian here. Our shit is also fucked.
Its those fucking seppos.
Almost any European, Asian, African or South American country, this would fuel a surge in left wing interest, left wing ideology, revolutionary thinking.
Here in the United States of Canada, we think that blowing billions on foreign military contracts, foreign owned pollution pipelines and taxpayer subsidized foreign owned data centers, untouchable property acquisition corps are great!
Keep cranking up the inflation, spending and interest rates!
Elbow's up!!!!
Our left wing fucking suck.
This Avi guy might turn things around. Who knows.
Left-wing isn't getting votes just because they claim to be left wing.
This Avi guy might turn things around. Who knows.
They guy who hasn't been elected yet?
I mean... the ECB already raised at least once this year (September), and it's looking like there could be a second in December. Where's the revolution?
Of course, right as I'm shopping for a mortgage.
Just bought a place on variable two months ago. Off to a good start!
FWIW, I think variable was the right choice for you. My term is up soon, and we're going variable.
Over investment in AI is unsustainable. There's no path to profitability for the industry. There is going to be a major market correction soon—and it must be soon because the increasing costs of investment are burning through capital at an unsustainable rate.
This will directly put downward pressure on rates, as liquidity rapidly contracts as the circular investments in AI suddenly collapse.
And also indirectly, as a major driver of BoC rates is inflation, and one driver of inflation is chip prices exploding due to AI.
And also indirectly from stock market wealth losses: when investment valuations collapse, that reduces wealth, which in turn puts downward pressure on the housing/construction/materials markets (b/c affordability drops) and, hence, inflationary pressure from those industries.
And then, even more indirectly, the US will be in a politically untenable situation wrt their very expensive war of aggression triggering energy price spikes during a crash and recession. They will be forced to back down, which should stabilize energy prices.
So, I think you'll do very well on variable, even if it rises a bit in the short term.
Is the AI bubble anything like the housing bubble? Because I've been waiting for that to pop for 20 years.
No, it's not. Housing doesn't require much to sustain value, while AI valuations require the market to continue to believe it is a "growth industry", which means it will have explosive, exponential profit growth in the future. That is not possible, and the longer the market remains irrational, the more expensive it becomes.
Housing is, literally, unique. Every home is brought to market independently, and homeowners are unwilling to accept a lower price, so they sit on inventory.
There is also a lot of political pressure from homeowners to sustain valuations, especially from aging homeowners who are depending on the home valuations to fund retirement. And this is the demographic that votes.
vs. AI: in the coming months, when OpenAI, Anthropic, or any other smaller player needs to pay $billions to a supplier or default, and they can't raise more capital, they instantly go bankrupt. Then the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.
I do admire your optimism, but a couple knits to pick.
Real estate in Canada has been a growth industry since we decided that 0 or near-0 interest rates were the way of the land. That's why we've been in a housing crisis for 20 years.
Assume you're right and Anthropic and OpenAI both go bankrupt. Microsoft has its own AI. Nvidia has its own. Canada's government just bought into Cohere. Google has its own. Apple will have its own if it doesn't already. Amazon has its own. Assuming the AI bubble pops, maybe one or two of the big boys fail. What more than likely happens instead or also is the survivors get a lot bigger than they are.
I didn't address your point about housing. You're right that low interest rates have exacerbated the problem, but the bigger upstream causes are more that:
To be affordable, housing needs to drop 50%. Interest rates being low contribute, on the margin, but don't account for that big of a difference. You'll notice that housing prices barely dropped at all, and even continued to rise in some areas, when rates skyrocketed 4 years ago.
It’s political suicide to run on a platform of reducing housing prices. People who vote are, disproportionately, homeowners who don’t want numbers to go down.
It's never actually been done, so we don't know that. Even Singh didn't run on reducing housing prices last year.
The missing middle. We’re building the wrong kind of housing, and zoning bylaws are preventing unit densification where people want to live.
Speaking as someone who currently rents an apartment, if I can ever get to a point where I can own something, I sure as hell don't want to own one. The only thing worse than renting your individual unit is owning your individual unit and fighting with the other individual owners about maintaining the common areas.
The lack of non-market-rate housing options. Affordable housing options have a disproportionate effect on housing costs. Canada hasn’t invested in, basically, any affordable housing since the 70s, and we have some of the lowest non-market-housing rates in the developed world.
And the non-market housing that does exist is in such disrepair that you couldn't pay me to live in it. Because in this country, non-market housing means controlled by the government, and that's a political football.
Housing being held as investments first, and housing second.
Which is why I said it's a growth industry. They bought low. They're not about to sell lower.
To be affordable, housing needs to drop 50%. Interest rates being low contribute, on the margin, but don’t account for that big of a difference. You’ll notice that housing prices barely dropped at all, and even continued to rise in some areas, when rates skyrocketed 4 years ago.
Canada's population also skyrocketed 4 years ago, and only stopped skyrocketting (at least, as much) in the last year or so. There were two different demand levers being pulled. BoC pulled theirs to reduce, GoC pulled theirs to increase.
What more than likely happens instead or also is the survivors get a lot bigger than they are.
No. No, they won't. They're all losing money hand-over-fist. And they're all circularly invested with each other. Microsoft owns OpenAI, and OpenAI uses Microsoft compute which they pay for with ownership. Microsoft valuation is inflated because of OpenAI, and when the bubble bursts, they're going to lose a lot of money.
If you're interested in economics/finance, I suggest reading about the circular cashflows and investment in the AI space.
To make it even worse, they're effectively lying in their accounting, claiming the compute they're giving away as a "marketing expense" instead of operating costs, while booking the value as revenue. The profit : cost ratio is even worse than headline numbers suggest. They are burning through multiples of all of their revenue on operating costs, before they even start to pay for expansion.
In other words, it's fucked.
Sure, AI is here to stay—small to midsize models are already trained and cheap to run. But it's also not going to make significant profit for anyone.
Like I said. I admire your optimism. But I think you need to fact-check yourself. Microsoft owns at most 27% of OpenAI. And Microsoft is currently working on its own internal AI (MAI). Even in the unlikely event that OpenAI goes bankrupt, Microsoft and its own AI products will be just fine.
I know that, yes. But it's relevant to my point: AI costs more to train and run than its value. That Microsoft, Google, Meta, OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and hundreds of smaller players are all losing money at the same game just makes the problem worse.
The cashflows needed to pay back investment to date is already impossible, and it's scheduled to accelerate.
And Microsoft being tied to OpenAI is largely about continuing their "growth story" to justify their valuation. The "value" of their ownership stake, even as huge as it is, is largely irrelevant; once the house comes tumbling down, it's going to be a very long path to recovery for anyone involved in AI. They will write off many billions and be responsible for many times that in evaluated paper wealth.
Google, Meta, and Microsoft will all be fine, eventually. They have enough stable revenue streams outside of AI to weather the storm, most likely (I'm not sure how leveraged they are, but with string cashflows, I imagine they'll survive.)
Musk's pile of companies are dicey. OpenAI and Anthropic won't meaningfully exist in 5 years.
So, I'm pretty confident that a variable rate mortgage is the right choice right now. But even if you aren't as doom and gloom, it seems pretty clear that signing a 5-year fixed right now is unlikely to be a good idea.
Like I said, I admire your optimism.
And signing a 5-year fixed is almost always a good idea. Remember when Tif said rates would be low for a long time? I'd have absolutely signed fixed then. The odds are greater my financial situation improves in 5 years than in 1. I like knowing what I'll be paying in October of next year. Variable means I don't even know what I'm paying in January of next year.
AFAIK, variable interest rate mortgages only require payment increases if rates rise high enough to no longer cover interest payments.
Anyway, I hope you're right. As confident as I am in a pending financial disaster, it would be great for everyone if that doesn't happen!
AFAIK, variable interest rate mortgages only require payment increases if rates rise high enough to no longer cover interest payments.
You're close. You're thinking Fixed-Rate variable. And the flip side of that is if you hit your trigger rate and your payments increase, they won't decrease again until you renew. So when interest rates go up, you're watching the BoC to see by how much and then doing the math - either that, or you're surprised when your mortgage payment increases. But when interest rates go down, you're basically on a fixed mortgage.
The other one is Adjustable-Rate variable, and that one follows the interest rate up and down more closely. BoC raises, your payments rise. BoC drops, your payments drop.
Neither is long-term better than a fixed mortgage, which is why that's what 60-70% of mortgages in Canada are.
in the coming months, when OpenAI, Anthropic, or any other smaller player needs to pay $billions to a supplier or default, and they can’t raise more capital, they instantly go bankrupt.
and those companies have no assets. They are worthless.
Better you than me. I'm busy trying to afford rent.
Higher rates make layoffs more likely which hits them, you and me. Assuming you both work for an employer. :D
Between interest rates, the US, and everyone in a panic about AI, I just assume my job's a goner. And if it's gonna be a goner anyway, crank 'em.
Should've gone the Pleb route like half the population.
Mortgage rates don't affect you if you can't even afford to become a part of "homeowner" class.
We'll own nothing and serve the oligarchs that own and control Canada:)
did you lock in a rate yet?
I'm renewing in six months and I'm getting fixed for 3 years.
I just had to renew mine. Literally just before it was going up thankfully.
Hopefully the principle should go down a bit, but it’ll be negligible as people only go by the monthly payment
So are rate hikes good or bad? I need someone to make sense of this! Where's Jarule?
All the spending growth in the economy is coming from the whales, the top 20%, of earners.
You can charge 2k for an iPhone and they pay it without blinking an eye.
If taxes were raised on the top 20% of earners it would slow their spending and tame inflation.
The chance of this happening is close to 0% so expect more interest rate hikes as it will be the Poor's who are made to pay.
Raising the Poor's taxes would do little as they are all buying necessities only at this point. And many are making hard choices about which necessities to go without.
Fuck you, Most Feminist Prime Minister™ in Canadian history.
Fuck your Katy Perry and biological children with a diseased flange from a septic tank.
What does the PM and former PM (and his gf and kids) have anything to do with the independent Bank of Canada?
It's easier to blame someone in power who you don't agree with for everything than it is to have a more nuanced view and recognize that complicated issues never have simple solutions. This isnt to say that some of those problems don't land at Carney's, or previously Trudeau's, feet, but not so much this one. And the solution isn't so simple as to be encapsulated by a catch phrase like "Axe the Tax".
My PM's solution is to hand over more assets and control over the the billionaire Epstein class.
Fk Pierre. I'm happy he's not in power.
The ones in power aren't looking any better either.
That has been a pretty common trend for both the conservatives, regardless of the party name, and the Liberals for the last 30 or 40 years, if not longer. I can't recall if Mulroney did or not, but I would be unsurprised. But I slexpect the gender or preference of partner in Carney's kid doesn't have any bearing on that situation.
I'm not going to shill for his kids or be their vanguard.
They shove my loved ones and I into the grinder without a thought. Therefore, I start wishing and hoping the worst for their's.
I don't worship a plus sign. I'm never "turning the other cheek".
Do I want christian nationalism or sharia? No, of course not. Will I gladly pick it as a last resort to destroy the peace for the oligarchs in my country? 💯 yes.
These two situations are orthogonal. You not seeing that is your problem, not theirs.
I never claimed to play by their rules.
They destroy mine. I return the favour every which way possible.
Cool, attack them for their class, and what they and theirs do to others. But this is about as dumb as attacking black people in Canada because Obama was president of the US.
No it ain't.
Barack was mixed race, half black. I don't believe in white supremacist "one drop" rule.
I really do have more than a surface level understanding of our system. I refuse to be their obedient servant.
They destroy mine. I'll do everything to return the favour multiple folds. No quarter.
Let's assume just for the sake of argument that they have all teamed up to destroy your family. Just yours. You really think this impacts them? He'll survive whatever's coming and so will his kids.
Rather than attacking other people for what they won't give you, create your own. Not wealthy enough? Fix that. You have the ability and the technology. Yeah, I'm not thrilled about where I am either. I've been working on changing that for a bit now. It won't be quick, but you're not the instant gratification sort, are you?
I can work on both myself as well as returning the favour to them in my free time.
I also don't have to go at it alone. I'll have my family affected as well in this scenario. I'll have their support as well, no?
It's not about instant gratification. He's not "god". In his religion, even his "god" got nailed to a tree...
I can work on both myself as well as returning the favour to them in my free time.
Sure, but why? What does it gain you? You're certainly not hurting them.
I also don’t have to go at it alone. I’ll have my family affected as well in this scenario. I’ll have their support as well, no?
That's between you and your family. But if you're working on yourself the way you should be, whether you have their support or not shouldn't matter. Though you should also probably be teaching them to do the same thing.
It’s not about instant gratification. He’s not “god”. In his religion, even his “god” got nailed to a tree…
I don't care what it's not about. I care what it's about. If it's about doing better for yourself, then concentrate on that. You're wasting your energy doing otherwise.
I don't think it's wise to lay down arms in every case. I believe in fighting to make a better tomorrow for others that I won't live to see.
I'll continue to do right by myself. Try to make my life better the best I can with the limited resources I have. That doesn't mean I have I stop hating the overlords and not throw a wrench in their machine every chance I get.
Basically, I'm not as nice as you or Jesus.
It's not about being nice. If it were up to me I'd hang the lot of them from the CN Tower and call it good. But it's not up to me, and that wrench you're throwing isn't getting anywhere near their machine.
Gotta keep trying then. In hopes it might eventually reach the machine.
I find it very difficult to just admit defeat and do absolutely nothing.
You're not doing nothing, though. You're making your own life better, which is the only thing you can control. Otherwise what you're actually doing is making your arm tired for no damn good reason.
The monkey is still alive and well in my DNA.
The urge to fling poo if all else fails is strong...
Well, that'll accomplish things for sure. No guarantees they'll be things you want, but like I said... you're gonna do what you're gonna do. It's a free country.
Just out of curiosity reading this whole thread. What outside of whinging on Lemmy are you doing? Are you doing anything offline?
Yes. You?
I don't necessarily believe you. If you were you wouldnt be so ornery online as stated it's just wasted energy. Screams of someone in a basement at a keyboard.
Me? I'm too busy raising 3 kids and protecting my family and their future to care. Control what I can and accept what I can't. I feel the government here in Canada is in as good of hands as I could hope for.
They do have levers. Several in fact, while the BOC simply monitors one number and responds with the other.
For just one option, the largest effect on monetary supply is taxes, not interest rates.
They threw mine into the grinder without any thought.
I'm returning the favour
uh...The Bank of Canada sets interest rates, not the PM.
The Prime Minster of Canada is Mark Carney, since 2025. Update your flags.
I'm well aware.
I believe in the freedom and our right to burn flags.
I'm not with the flag shaggers.
Trudeau kept the inflation under control very well compared to what almost every other country saw in the same time period.
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