Southern Exposure

5/14/2017

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The U.S. is Canada's biggest trading partner (74% of our total exports and 65% of total imports StatsCan March 2017 data); so we pay attention to our southern neighbour; bigly.

The chart above is my look at Canadian household debt and the observation that Federal Direct Investment into Canada has now been net negative for 20 years with the just published 2016 data update. That's a trend and notice it's now at an historic wide for the last two years.

Foreigners have not been willing to invest in Canada in a net positive way for the last 20 years and Canadian investors prefer to seek their fortune offshore where labour costs are cheaper and regulations less onerous. "Canada’s fall to the third most attractive region in the world for investment is reflective of Alberta’s continued deterioration, as investors continue to view the province as less attractive for investment." Fraser Institute March 2, 2017

Canadians have made a massive long term leveraged bet on domestic housing which is a negative yielding asset that needs cash flow to sustain it. If you have recently signed up for a 25 year mortgage, you should consider asking your employer for a 25 year employment contract; you may need it if most of our business is with the U.S. All bets are off on the future.

I covered what I think to be President Donald Trump's characteristics on November 14, 2016, namely that his tendency is psychopathic and fascist: "Trumped" November 14, 2016, but Let me add some more descriptors.

Kleptocratic from the Greek, literally means "rule by thieves" (Wikipedia).

ITEM: Trump Kleptocracy Watch: An Update. The New Yorker April 4, 2017
ITEM: Kleptocrats manage to nationalize risk while privatizing profits. Washington Post January 5. 2017
ITEM: Trump will turn America into an 'all-out kleptocracy' like Russia and Ukraine. Paul Krugman November 15, 2016

Sociopathic Narcissist: Donald Trump, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Sociopathy, by John C. Espy Karnacology, March 01, 2017

Here is the introduction:

With all of the discussions going on about Donald Trump’s ‘narcissism’, I thought I might offer a broader clinical perspective regarding sociopathic narcissism. Clearly there is great ongoing discussion about Donald Trump’s ‘narcissism’, however, I believe what has been errant in the discussion is that Trump is by definition not just ‘narcissistic.’ Trump’s narcissistic manifestations also appear to be well entrenched in sociopathy.

From a pragmatic standpoint an ‘amount’ of narcissism is necessary for being successful as it is for living. What is imperative to understand, is that our now president appears to have a definable mental illness that appears to manifest as a narcissistic personality disorder with sociopathy.

This primitive form of narcissism is by definition an intractable and realistically untreatable mental illness that even under the most ideal of clinical circumstances is only manageable at best. In Mr. Trump’s case it is manifest in apparently shady business dealings and in politically oppressive ways. However, the etiology is not business per se or political by nature but rather psychological. What we see manifest in individuals who are primitively bound within this commingled pathological structure takes on the following dynamics:

Sociopathic narcissism is not a diagnosis that is mysterious or one that looks like magical realism. Rather, like most clinical processes it has a relatively well defined structure (within having almost a complete lack of intrapsychic structure) and is also relatively predictable, once the individual has revealed enough of how their sociopathic narcissistic dynamics manifest. First, as we have seen demonstrated repeatedly, and using Mr. Trump as an example, narcissists seek out others who will behave in an obsequious manner, not just while in their physical presence but also who will parrot their projections while out of their physical presence.

In clinical circles that possess a familiarity of sociopathic narcissistic personalities, there is a slang that refers to those who encircle a sociopathic narcissist, particularly one with power, as ‘pandering whores.’ The term is clearly derogatory, particularly for those who seek to achieve secondary gain from riding the coattails of a sociopathic narcissistic individual or those who also manifest the same psychological structure, but have not been able to, if you will, get the traction to achieve the ‘greatness’ or notoriety of the one that they cling too. In essence, they become ‘great’ only in the shadow of the one they bark for.

A primary source of anxiety that lives within the sociopathic narcissist is a terror of ruinous disillusionment which would ultimately terminate in a catastrophic exposure of what is in essence a fraudulent existence. As the risk of exposure intensifies, be it in a dyad or more macro group structures, their intrapsychic constellation becomes increasing more fragile and their manifest behaviour becomes more erratic.

If you want to get under the hood of the Trumpster's brain, keep reading John Espy's diagnosis, it's worth the effort.

As Timothy L. O'Brien, the executive editor of Bloomberg Gadfly and Bloomberg View succinctly put it: Two things have always driven the president: self-aggrandizement and self-preservation. Bloomberg, May 10, 2017.

Trump's need for self-aggrandizement and self-preservation is the easiest filter to use to put all Trump news through when assessing whether Canada and your income is going to be better off as a result of the news. If it is good for Trump, check your wallet.

There are other adjectives to describe President Trump.

This following interview of Trump by editors of The Economist magazine where Trump asks "Have you heard that expression ("prime the pump") used before? Because I haven’t heard it. I mean, I just…I came up with it a couple of days ago and I thought it was good. It’s what you have to do."... will probably elicit more additions to your own list of descriptors.

DONALD TRUMP, the President of the United States, along with Steve Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, and Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, sat down for a conversation with editors from The Economist on May 4th, 2017.

The Religious Right
Part of Putin's Playbook

If you want a glimpse of where we’re headed as a country, look to Russia. For years, conservatives — especially fundamentalist Christian conservatives — have held Russia as an ideal to which they could aspire. As Vladimir Putin cracked down on the free press and the rights of his Muslim and LGBT citizens, many conservatives came to see him not as a brutal autocrat but as a paternalistic defender of traditional values. Many white supremacists likewise fawn over Putin’s Russia. Neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, now famous for being punched in the face, called it the sole white power remaining in the world, and Klansman David Duke has said he believes Russia holds the “key to white survival.” J. Ryne Danielson, February 2, 2017

Why Vladimir Putin does the bidding of the Orthodox Church against the evangelical Christian religions. Copying from the playbook of Joseph Stalin, Putin revived the Russian Orthodox Church to intensify patriotic support and presents himself as a defender of Christian civilization, because he saw the church had an ability to arouse the people in a way that the party could not.