Some thoughts on the end of Donald J. Trump

President Trump, Evan Vucci AP

This was written on Friday, November 6th. Since then the election has been called for Joe Biden.

It’s Friday, November 6th, and Pennsylvania seems to be looking like it will go to Biden. With four battleground states showing narrow Biden leads, the math seems inescapable. Biden will be the 46th president of the United States.

The narrowness of this victory is unsettling. A record turnout for both Republicans and Democrats, the largest turnout since the 1960s of the electorate, the largest percentage of votes by visible minorities for a Republican candidate since Richard Nixon, only showed that American remains a polarized land. The hoped for “Blue Wave” as Americans repudiated Trump and his enablers did not materialize. The Senate will likely remain in the hands of Republicans. The House of Representatives may flip to Republicans too.

Even now, after all that has unfolded over the last four years, much of what brought Trump to power; anger at a failure of the establishment to protect jobs, uncertainty about the ethnic and cultural future of the United States, the erosion of the middle class, the simultaneous exhaustion of being THE global superpower while being blamed for being one. These issues linger, promised but unaddressed by Trump, ignored by his party and fueling alienation in the general populace.

Other, more persistent aspects of American culture have also been on display. Since Richard Hofstader first wrote his book Anti-Intellectualism in American Life in 1962 (He calls Eisenhower “conventional in mind, (and) relatively inarticulate” – cruel words for one of America’s best remembered Republican presidents) Americans continue to lament, often publicly, just how stupid they find one another. Whether it is over face masks, the environment, or conspiracies about “the deep state”, Americans remain shockingly divided, often down the middle.

But with Biden elected (presuming he survives all the legal attacks and mandated recounts) and once the final vote tallies are certified in a few weeks, a corner will have been turned. Trump, in his role as a lame duck president will likely shore up personal protections, lash out at allies that failed to defend him, denounce democratic institutions that have allowed for his failure, and presumably pardoning those in his close circle and looking to shield himself from any future prosecution. Biden will hopefully find some common ground in the Senate and House of Representatives that will allow business to proceed, but it seems safe to assume that the most ambitious parts of the Democrat’s wish list won’t make it into law. Similarly, hopes for a Trump sized stimulus package will now also be dashed by a Republican establishment always uncomfortable with Trump’s lavish spending but fearful of his wrath.

From the perspective of the investment world this seems to be a continuation of the status quo. Biden does not possess Trump’s unique skill at bullying, backed by the threat of his irate voters. Instead the hope will be that he can better negotiate with Republicans. But with the election leaving the GOP in a strong legislative position there will be little appetite for aggressive policy shifts. Instead we should expect tepid fiscal stimulus, continued strength in businesses profiting from the pandemic (like tech stocks) and a wider, more subdued recovery as we face the immediate economic uncertainty.

So often we think big things represent monumental shifts. The election of Trump was one such event, but in the end his legacy will be a great deal smaller, and I suspect better thought of, than we might guess now. His ignorance, narcissism, and sociopathy were critical flaws in a man that showed great skill in reading the American public. His few achievements, including peace between Israel and several Arab states, challenging China and striking some kind of trade deal, and boosting American military spending were not missteps. His useless forays into border walls and needless antagonism of American allies will not be missed. At the outset of his presidency he even had the foresight to surround himself with some accomplished and knowledgeable people. In the end Donald Trump’s biggest enemy was himself. Were Trump a more competent and less incurious man he could have been a formidable political force. Instead, his certainty in his own skill and inability to adapt made him an aspiring autocrat in search of a balcony.

To cultural observers, the election of Trump should be a reminder that small things that go unnoticed or ignored often prove to be bigger issues. The sudden mysterious outbreak of an unknown form of pneumonia in Wuhan at the end of 2019. The subtle shift in economic thinking by political leaders across the West. A demographic trend that sees a generation shrinking, maybe even incapable of marrying. The rapid economic growth of an often-overlooked part of the world. It may even be the surprising growth of visible minority voters for a candidate long believed to be their enemy. These quiet things, hiding in the corners, may be the issues that guide our future rather than the bombast of men like Donald Trump.

In 2015 I wrote that “You don’t have to love people like Rob Ford or Donald Trump, but their ability to change the political terrain, to question traditional assumptions about the electorate and undo the laziness of identity politics is healthy for a democracy, even when you don’t like the messenger.” Looking back on four years, I am only desiring a return to normalcy, but with so many of the issues that brought Trump to the White House still unaddressed I’m afraid that whatever normalcy Joe Biden can bring will be short lived.

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Aligned Capital Partners Inc.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

The Undiscovered Country

Pandemics, plagues and other disasters have previously heralded major changes to economic and social landscapes. Most notably, the Black Death had the effect of badly eroding the existing feudal structure. Literally so many people died that feudal lords had to entice serfs to come and work their land or risk it sitting fallow. The Irish potato famine, which reversed the demographic trends in Ireland and made it an outlier in European population growth, also drastically improved the lives of those that survived the famine. This pandemic will be no different, changing the fortunes of many by the time it is gone.

While I wait for books on our current situation, governments aren’t sitting idly by. Faced with an unprecedented crisis, politicians have cried havoc and let slip the public purse strings, passing huge relief bills and providing large social support to ease the monetary impact of global shutdowns and the sudden halt to economies.

This marks a serious departure from what might be considered “peace time” economic management. In normal times, and for much of the past 40 years, control of the economy has been left in the hands of central banks who have manipulated the overnight lending rates (or key interest rates) to encourage or retard economic growth. Even if you haven’t paid much attention to the work of central banks you are likely familiar with some of the most notable names. Alan Greenspan in the 1990s, Ben Bernanke through the financial crisis, and Mark Carney as the Governor of the Bank of Canada and then Governor of the Bank of England have all helmed a central bank and were a staple of economic news and forecasting.

The job of setting rates was to encourage growth and mange inflation; increasing the cost of borrowing should slow economic growth and curb inflation, while cutting rates should make borrowing cheaper and speed up economic growth. But since 2008, with rates hovering at near zero and now a global pandemic destroying wealth, governments have had to take a more active roll in direct economic management.

Enter Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT, the new(ish) idea that governments can largely spend their way out of problems and that fiscal deficits may be the cure for what ails us. The theory has been nicely (and optimistically) covered in the book “The Deficit Myth” by Stephanie Kelton, who argues that our understanding of money and taxes are wrong and as a result we have misunderstood the best way to deal with wealth inequality and job creation.

Kelton’s book is well written, but natural criticisms of her argument feel conspicuously absent. The crux of her thesis is that so long as you’re a “monetary sovereign”, that is a nation that issues its own currency and issues debt in its own currency, its impossible to go bankrupt. In addition, concerns that printing your own money might lead to inflation are not well grounded and that governments are not running deficits large enough to get to full employment. Some of this makes sense, indeed for many years we’ve seen countless countries like Canada, the United States and Japan all run very large deficits with no serious repercussions. But much of the language in the book feels unusually precise, navigating us around large objections with clever rhetorical sleight of hand. Where anyone with a passing understanding might wonder how it is that countries that have previously succumbed to too much debt and hyperinflation didn’t reap the benefits of MMT, the book is quick warn that you don’t want to have the “wrong” type of deficit and that too much spending can be detrimental, before rushing the reader off to see what can be done with MMT to fix pressing issues.

Whether this is a good idea or not, MMT has found a champion in Justin Trudeau, a prime minister for whom spending money as a political solution is as constant as the northern star. Reportedly our new finance minister Chrystia Freeland may be a fan too, a departure from the more traditional Bay Street pedigree of Bill Morneau. But even if our most senior politicians do not have any explicit endorsement of MMT, the direction of spending and the behavior of the Bank of Canada suggests the Modern Monetary Theory is central to current government policy.

Since March, the Bank of Canada has purchased the vast bulk of Canadian government issuances, particularly at the long end of the yield curve (debt that matures in over 11 years), and by the end of 2021 the BoC is expected to hold 60% of all outstanding Government of Canada securities. Intentional or otherwise, this is what MMT looks like, with the government effectively issuing debt to itself so it can spend more. And currently Canada is on track to run the largest deficits of any country, developed or otherwise, in the world.

Governments frequently run deficits but have relied on efforts of slowed spending and economic growth to reduce the long-term debt burden. In fact, it has very rarely been the case that governments ever cut spending, more frequently simply reducing future promised spending below predicted rates of inflation. Yet despite the fact that no government I can think have has run a surplus over the last decade, the belief that we haven’t spent enough will likely only be a reassuring message to governments looking for opportunities to improve their standing in the polls.

Under MMT, politicians like Donald Trump actually look very good (this goes unacknowledged by Kelton, but its impossible to miss). Trump’s lavish spending and huge deficits did seem to have the desired impact of reducing unemployment to below 4%, much lower than the previously believed “natural” rate of unemployment of 5%. And as a result of the pandemic, the US deficit moved from an expected $1 Trillion in 2020, to about $3.7 Trillion for the year. It’s currently an open-ended question how much more needs to be spent before the deficit will be large enough to offset the impact of Covid-19, let alone all the other ills that society faces. Given that most economists are calling for even more spending into 2021 and maybe even 2022, its hard to imagine how big a cheque will need to be written.

A central tenet of our society has been that debt makes us weaker, and that unconstrained spending, either by a household or a government will inevitably become a problem if left unchecked. Modern Monetary theory turns this on its head, and while the theory is serious it would likely not have found mainstream consideration were it not for the pandemic. Like feudal lords forced to consider paying serfs to work their lands, politicians are having to make peace with running huge deficits and manage ballooning debts.

But MMT remains untested, its ideas about money, debt and financial sovereignty are theoretical. Our relationship to debt and our ideas about preserving wealth are very old and persistent, while those that have broken the bond of fiscal prudence, be it Greece in 2011, Zimbabwe in the 1990s, the Weimer Republic in post war Germany or Revolutionary France, have always ended in defaults and hyper-inflation.

I remain skeptical of ideas like MMT, but open to new approaches where old ones seem to be failing. Covid-19 will likely be with us until 2022, putting pressure on all levels of government for the immediate future. Politically, Western nations weren’t doing well prior to the pandemic, plagued with populist political insurgencies, a retreating liberal order and lack luster economic growth. Now with a mountain of new problems, MMT offers perhaps a path to saving economies and people’s livelihoods by freeing us from previous assumed constraints, but carries with it awesome risk. Will our political class be able to resist borrowing or printing too much? We may have no choice but to embark on this path, into an undiscovered country.

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Aligned Capital Partners Inc.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

The China Syndrome

Even before the pandemic the Chinese Communist Party had been flexing it’s muscles. In response to the arrest of Huawei executive in Canada, the Chinese government illegally kidnapped and has continued to hold two Canadians on fictional charges of espionage. [MT1] China has gone tit for tat in response to the Donald Trump led trade war, putting tariffs on US agricultural goods. [MT2] In Australia, an effort to buy control of Australia’s mining industries and infrastructure has led to tightening controls on foreign investments. Border clashes in India’s far north have led to a month’s long standoff and increasing buildup between the two nuclear armed nations. The world has watched the Chinese government crackdown on Hong Kong, reversing its promise of 50 years of autonomy and One China, two systems. It reneged on its pledge not to militarize the Spratly Islands in the South China Seas. In the far west of the country, a crackdown on China’s Muslim inhabitants, Uighurs, has led to an internment of over a million people. China is also reportedly using its extensive Belt and Road initiative to gain strategic access to countries to broaden its sea power. [MT3] In countries where they have done substantial lending, particularly in Africa, efforts have been made to get the Renminbi used alongside the US dollar. In July of this year, the new security law passed by the Chinese government made it effectively illegal, globally, to advocate for democratic reform in Hong Kong.

Figure 1: Hong Kong- 9 June 2019: the crowd protest in the rally. More than 150,000 protesters with no main organisation, took to the streets of Hong Kong Sunday to oppose a controversial extradition bill

For a year replete with terrible things, China has given its best efforts to be more than an “also-ran”. But for any superpower (and make no mistake, this is a superpower and we live in a multi-polar world) this seems like a lot of toes to step on. Canada, the US, Australia, South Korea, Europe, and India have all, in one way or another, been challenged by the Chinese. Even the Chinese response to Covid-19, as detailed in Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, shows that the Chinese authorities covered up the seriousness of the new virus, and that a charitable reading of its actions would be disinterest in how other countries might deal with it. At worst, it’s actions might be described as malevolent, interested in seeing it become a pandemic for their own benefit.

The response from the international community has been mixed however. Far from relying on old alliances to convene panels and establishing a coordinated international response, countries have largely faced these problems in isolation, and it is precisely for that reason that China has been so aggressive over the past 12 months.

Under Obama, whose own foreign engagements were at best mixed, there was at least a sense that the US intended to lead an organized response to China’s growing power status. Between the two leaders as well there seemed to be a clear understanding that their relationship was going to need ongoing management. But the election of Trump changed that math. First, the US bowed out of the Trans Pacific Partnership (both Trump and Clinton vowed to not sign the signature deal that would have aimed to get out in front of China in Pacific trade relations) and Trump has maintained a signature focus on “America First”, a mindset that has backed away from multilateral strategy and look for deals that exclusively benefit the United States.

In the short term the US is likely to benefit, signing deals by themselves means fewer compromises seen in large multilateral deals. But America’s strength has never been that it can “go it alone”. Though much of its’ historic growth did come from its rapid expansion across the continental US, the US’s rise to prominence at the end of the Second World War was its ability to build an extensive network of allies and client states. Compared to the Soviet Union the US lacked a conventional army to match its Soviet rival, but through the Marshall Plan, NATO, and other strategic alliances there has been no corner of the Earth that the US couldn’t reach and influence. That allowed the US to establish the “global order”, one that was initially in opposition to the Soviet Bloc, but one that also became the sought-after route to global prosperity. 

Figure 2 – The Chinese Navy aims to be the central power in Asian waters, including the South China Seas and Indian Ocean to the Eastern coast of Africa

Following it’s admission into the World Trade Organization, China has also massively benefited from this global order, but like any rising power it seeks to remake the world in ways more advantageous to itself. Xi Jinping, like Donald Trump, has been explicit in his desire to “Make China Great Again”, undoing the “Century of Humiliation” that looms large in the minds of CCP officials. The historic China is that of a great power, a centre for global culture, surrounded by vassal states like Korea and Japan. Xi Jinping and the CCP, wish to see China returned to this role in the 21st century, making Pacific neighbors subject to its influence and providing a growing alternative to US and Western economic development. All this is old hat. The real question is why is it that China seems to have suddenly become so aggressive despite the immense success its had while not being antagonistic.

One explanation might be China’s policy of Active Defense, a position that dates back to the founding of the Communist regime. This is a posture that seeks for maximum aggression in the face of potential conflicts with larger enemies. Forms of active defense appeared when China helped the North Koreans beat back US forces in the Korean War, the Sino-Indian war of 1962 and an attack on Russia over a border dispute in 1969. This form of defense aims to put potential aggressor nations on a back foot and establish clearly that China’s will regarding national interests is resolute.

Figure 3 – An Indian soldier high in the Himalayas

Another possibility is that China is testing the waters. With much of the world struggling to deal with Covid-19, this is as good a time as ever to see how united the traditional great powers have been. So far the response has been disorganized and uncoordinated. India, which has never had a strong desire for international alliances now finds itself fairly isolated, traditionally antagonistic with its neighbours (the longest walled border in the world is between India and Bangladesh) surrounded by nations that increasingly see their economic development through China. In Europe, the resurgence of a nationalist far right and the high cost of economic bailouts following 2008 has left many countries at Europe’s fringe more open to help from outside the EU. Meanwhile, the high cost and duration of the wars against terrorism have left Western powers far less interested in open conflict and their populations more wary of joint military adventures.

Whether the CCP under Xi Jinping lied about the nature of the novel coronavirus (almost certainly), or deliberately allowed it to escape across its borders (hard to conclusively prove), the Chinese government now finds itself exactly where it always wished to be, ascendant against a disorganized and self-serving group of largely Western antagonists. And while America may get some short terms gains from its “America first” foreign policy, the collapse of an organized and united group of nations committed to the global order will only make life more unpredictable and more costly.

***

In 2010 China blocked the export of rare earth minerals to Japan over arrested fishermen, and in 2011 China stopped buying salmon from Norway after awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to a Chinese dissident. In 2012 China punished the Philippines by leaving bananas on the docks until they rotted during a “prolonged investigation” after the Philippines challenged China’s claim on islands in Philippine waters. In February China stopped buying Canadian canola as part of its campaign to have Canada release Meng Wanzhou. In response to an Australian request for an international inquiry into the outbreak of the Covid-19, the Chinese government stopped accepting Australian beef and placed an 80% tariff on Australian barley. All of these events were a result of China responding to international decisions or publicity they didn’t like. In another time these penalties would be of little consequence, but China is the number one trading partner for 130 countries, giving it unprecedented economic leverage on a global scale. That makes the possibility of an effective response to Chinese economic might all but impossible without committed allies.

Figure 4 – Caricature of the British Diplomat, Lord Macartney on his failed mission to Peking. From 1792 by James Gillray

A famous but apocryphal saying from the 1850s was “If I could add an inch of material to every Chinaman’s shirt tail, the mills of Lancashire could be kept busy for a generation.” In the early 21st century those dreams have been realized but they’ve come with a high cost. At it’s current rate of growth (around 6.9%) every four years China adds the equivalent of the economy of Germany to its own. With such economic power why wouldn’t China assume that the world should be remade in its interests? Why should China not have more say in international organizations? Why should it not set the terms of border disputes with neighbours? Why should it not tell human rights organizations to butt out of its business? Why should China not “have its place in the sun?”, as Kaiser Wilhelm once said of a similarly ascending Germany more than a century ago?

China’s rise is real and cannot be undone. It must be managed, and for those of us that believe that the world is better under the current global order, that means that middle economic powers like Canada, Australia, Western Europe, the UK, Japan and South Korea, will need to better manage our own big power, the United States. With China now the largest market for cars, cell phones, online shopping, alcohol and luxury goods we also cannot ignore or live without the Chinese economy. We are bound together, but not yet subservient. As citizens in a free world, and investors in our own future, these are the problems we must begin demanding of our own politicians to solve, or we will all pay for the consequences with a poorer and more turbulent world.

Books used in this essay include:

               Destined for War by Graham Alison

               Active Defense by M. Taylor Flavel

               The China Wave: Rise of the Civilizational State by Zhang Weiwei

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Aligned Capital Partners Inc.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

Manufacturing Foxes

Manufacturing Foxes – Tenuous Connections Across Time

In a display of sheer audacsiousness, Adrian tries to connect a forgotten sport from the 1600s to difficulty in re-shoring businesses today.

Can he do it?

Watch and find out!

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Aligned Capital Partners Inc.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

Beyond Protests and The Police

While protests may not be, strictly speaking, market-based news, the size and scope of the protests regarding police violence and black lives makes them hard to ignore regardless of context. So far, these massive public demonstrations have not had an impact on markets (though they may yet on the spread of Covid-19), and have garnered a mixed reaction in the wider society. Whether police will be held to a level of greater accountability for actions that result in death remains to be seen, and regardless of what reforming actions are taken by police departments its quite obvious that it will take years to overcome distrust of authorities in some communities.

A more interesting aspect of the protests have been calls to “defund the police”, a rallying cry that either means exactly what it says, or sparks 15 minutes of explanations as it “doesn’t mean quite what it sounds like”. The arguments for it do make some sense though, and within some police departments there is sympathy for the idea that too much is asked of the police, resulting in a hodgepodge of policy goals foisted on a group simply not equipped to handle them. Currently the same people who have to deal with a domestic disturbance and oppose criminal gangs are the same people that have to help those with serious mental health issues and spend their days collecting revenue for cities. Not all these jobs should likely fall on the same person.

This raises an interesting point, which is how our political class has largely sidestepped any of the blame aimed at police departments. Police only enforce the laws that they have on the books, and true to any bureaucratic industry, we have lots of laws on the books. So many laws in fact that it is practically impossible to know what they all are. By-laws are added with little consideration for what has preceded it, speed limits seem set arbitrarily and may be subject to change, some laws are posted while others invisible. Which laws are enforced and where is left to the discretion of the police at the time. Many laws end up serving an unintended dual function, launched ostensibly to combat thing A, but end up serving issue B.

Consider that in 2008, Ontario passed a law making it illegal to smoke in a car in the presence of a minor, someone under the age of 16. This was part of a long campaign aimed at discouraging smoking in public that bore some superficial resemblance to other laws that discouraged smoking by making it harder to do in social settings. But where as smoking in public on patios and bars limited where you could go, this new law invited police into a citizen’s private space and criminalized behavior that was, at least under the laws of the province, still kind of legal. But the real issue here is who the law inadvertently targets.

Despite continued drops in the number of people smoking, those people that do smoke are statistically more likely to be poorer with more minimal education. According to the CDC 30% of people below and 25% of those at or just above the poverty line smoke, while those at more than double the poverty level only smoke at a rate of about 15%. In short the people most likely smoking in their car won’t be found in Leaside, but might be found in one of Toronto’s less affluent but already heavily policed neighborhoods. This law isn’t intended to target minorities or the poor, but put in the hands of police who are already tasked with policing higher crime areas (again areas that tend towards being poorer and with higher populations of minorities and new Canadians) it puts another class of previously non-offending people into potential confrontations with the police.

You may remember the death of Eric Garner in 2014. Another black American who died in the arms of a police officer that was caught on camera, Garner had been placed in a choke hold and had died from lack of asphyxiation. Garner’s crime, that had led him to this confrontation with multiple police, was for selling “loose cigarettes”. As part of a style of policing called “broken windows”, police had been instructed by the highest levels of authority within civilian politics to crack down on minor crimes to scare off larger criminal enterprises. Tackling the “loose cigarette” problem ultimately involved “the deployment of special plainclothes unit, two sergeants, and uniformed backup” to arrest a man selling cigarettes for a dollar who had been arrested 12 previous times. At no point did anyone wonder if this was a useful deployment of resources, or whether re-arresting a man who had already been arrest 12 times might finally break his habit.

You might be tempted to imagine that police would simply look the other way when silly or impractical laws find their way onto the books, but this too is a problem. Indeed, we know that the police can sometimes be given directives to enforce some laws over others. But the law cannot function effectively when it is applied only at the discretion by those in authority. If a law cannot be practically enforced or only enforced unevenly, it probably shouldn’t be a law at all.

Politicians remain responsive to their voters, particularly so at municipal levels. That can put enormous pressure on them to pass laws that are intended to fix social ills for moral reasons, but our politicians should be mindful that every law passed puts potentially puts citizens into conflict with the police. So long as the police remain the first line of citizen’s interaction with the state’s power, whether it be for jay walking, speeding, parking illegally, domestic disturbances, assault, or more serious illegal activity, any action can theoretically become fatal. Recently two young people died during police interventions in the GTA. The first was a young woman named Regis Korchinski-Paquet, who fell from a balcony during a mental health crisis when police showed up to take her to CAMH. The second, D’Andre Campbell was shot by police in his home in Brampton when police were called because he was having a schizophrenic episode. How culpable the police were in these events is the subject of much debate, but families in both instances have wondered aloud whether it is the police that should be the people who come during a mental health crisis.  

While Canada’s problems are mercifully not those of the United States (the proliferation of guns and the militarization of police are fortunately not major issues here), that shouldn’t excuse politicians who make noise about police excesses while being quick to use the law to fix minor grievances. While the police continue to do their own reviews and consider reforms, politicians should perhaps begin considering an audit of the numerous laws that we keep and whether it still makes sense to be ticketing people for jaywalking, working out in a park, or issuing fines to children who run a lemonade stand, especially when these laws can not be enforced with any consistency.  Whether our politicians can rise to meet even this challenge remains to be seen.

*In addition to the linked articles within this post, I have also referenced the book The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale for anyone interested in the arguments of defunding or abolishing the police.

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Aligned Capital Partners Inc.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

Water and the Future of Global Conflict

It is hardly news that water is precious. Despite the planet being 70% water, only 2.5% is fresh and of that only 0.007% is available for human use. It should also not come as a surprise then that as societies get richer and develop their water needs grow to match industrial and personal consumption, making water not simply an essential resource for nations, but also between nations.

As nations in Africa and Asia continue to make great leaps forward in economic prosperity, water needs are putting those countries at odds with one another. Very few places are like Canada or Indonesia, self sufficient in water and not relying on shared water basins. Most nations share water with multiple other countries, necessitating treaties for its use. But even then, the changing economic fates of nations may mean that treaties become useless and fall out of date.

Farming along the Nile

In 1959 Egypt and Sudan signed a treaty to regulate water use between them ensuring that Egypt would receive the bulk of the Nile’s water, but the world’s longest river flows through 10 other countries, many thousands of kilometers away, all of whom need that water to economically develop. In the past few years, as African nations have grown and stabilized following the 1990s, their own economic goals have started to clash with the older and more established economy of Egypt. In 2010 Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Kenya signed an agreement aimed at stripping Egypt’s water rights from the 1959 agreement. It would create a new “Nile Basin Commission” to manage water sharing. In 2011 Burundi signed as well, and so far three of the countries have ratified the agreement.

In Asia water represents one potential flashpoint among many between China and any number of countries. Since Tibet was annexed by China in the 1950s the Chinese have secured the source of water to more nations than any other country, and today the most water that flows across borders from one country to another flows from China. Chinese actions to control water has meant that nations as diverse as India, Cambodia, Vietnam and Russia have all filed international grievances over shared water use. Water is also a flashpoint between Pakistan and India. The largely empty high altitude land of Kashmir, contested land that has been the source of three wars (two with Pakistan and one with China), is home to much of the tributaries that feed the Indus, which remains the primary source of water for agriculture in Pakistan.

An Indian soldier stands guard at the border with China in Kashmir

Sharing water isn’t simply an issue between nations, but an issue within nations too. In 2016, the Indian the states of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu ended up rioting over shared access to water, resulting in burning trucks identified as coming from the other state. Water rights are hotly contested not just in developing nations, but in the West as well. In California, which is a experiencing its worst drought in 1200 years, water rights have farmers fighting with cities. Orange groves, almond farms and avocados are all water thirsty crops that compete with other local needs for water.

The price of Almonds has continued to climb for years as water needs have made the crop more expensive

In the last few years issues around water have revolved around cities facing water shortages, most notably in Cape Town, South Africa, which got dangerously close to “day zero”, at which point the city would be officially out of water. Though rains finally returned before a full-blown crisis emerged, citizens of Cape Town spent months operating under water rationing while wealthier citizens paid for water to be delivered from other cities. Farmers were simply denied water for their crops, until finally they received a normal amount of rain for the rainy season (the first in four years).

But the ability to prioritize domestic and urban water concerns depends on a global order that is robust and sufficiently engaged to head off water conflicts between nations before they become more dangerous. But that world is eroding and with it the order that constrains nations.

It should not be a surprise that the decline of American global leadership coincides with increasing global tensions. India and China, having already fought one war, are currently engaged in ongoing military standoffs. Despite only sharing a few borders in largely remote places (in Jammu and Kashmir there exists only a frontier between China and India and there have been regular skirmishes in the past) Chinese and Indian military patrols regularly run into each other. Due to a treaty previously signed soldiers on either side are prevented from using guns to avoid escalation when two patrols meet (leading to some hilarious recounting of soldiers yelling, throwing punches and hurling rocks), but recently the response has been an increasing build up of military presence by both nations forcing an official diplomatic responses. The issue is not that China and India are about to go to war, but that the potential for war is increasing.

Far from heading into a period of increasing prosperity and international cooperation; something practically essential for tackling climate change, terrorism or pandemics, the global order is failing. Even before the age of Donald Trump and populist nativism it took enormous effort to corral nations into agreeing to restrictions on water use. The 1997 UN Convention on the Law of Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, which aimed at establishing “equitable and reasonable use” of shared water systems and prohibited nations from using water access to impose significant harm on another state only ever had sixteen nations agree to it. In the current climate it is unlikely that any new nations would even consider such a binding restriction.

The 21st century continues to throw new challenges at a global order that seems, at best, sclerotic. That breakdown in the international order is putting new risks on the table, leaving countries, sub-sovereign states, cities and farmers to fight their battles with less support, and more vulnerable to actors with military or diplomatic muscle to flex. China is one such nation that has a great deal of its future connected to the control of water, both through access to waterways in the South China Seas, and to the very water that irrigates crops and powers industry to its neighbours. A resource so precious and important deserves a great deal more attention than its currently getting.

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of ACPI.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

Who Will We Hold Accountable?

June is here and the summer promises to be hot, sunny and inviting. Yet Canadians are still struggling with the pandemic, with daily numbers still in the 100s of new cases and the curve being bent slowly. Far from crushing the pandemic or setting up a robust testing and tracing system Canadians are being reprimanded for being to close to each other in parks and watching the mayor of Toronto walk around incapable of wearing a mask properly.

These results are not nationally representative, but regionally specific. Quebec is currently the worst affected province, with Montreal the country’s epicentre for the virus. Ontario fairs only a little better, while the rest of the country is beginning to move to reopening. In all, while Canada largely sidestepped an out of control spike, we have failed to bring the virus under control.

Fighting the pandemic has taken an enormous financial and emotional toll, to citizens, to cities, and to the economy. Economic lifeboats to offset the worst of the effects have cost in the hundreds of billions and will represent a sizeable financial burden for the foreseeable future. That cost has been born willingly, with people foregoing seeing relatives and friends, risking the survival of businesses, and saying goodbye to loved ones who died in hospital alone, all in an effort to smother a new and existential threat to our well being.

But Canadians will be right to wonder whether our governments maximized our response and put our consent to be governed to good use, or did they squander it in bizarre and foolish ways? I’m sorry to say that it’s probably the latter.

Cast your mind back to March (roughly 100 years ago) and recall that the minister of health, Patty Hajdu had insisted that the coronavirus posed a minimal risk to Canadians. Questions about whether we should be wearing masks were dismissed as misguided and the idea that closing borders to people travelling to places that had been Covid-19 hotspots was considered useless or potentially even discriminatory.

What an innocent time.

Today masks are recommended (sort of) albeit reluctantly, borders are largely closed and social distancing is not simply a recommendation, but mandatory and enforced by private businesses. Concerns about racism have been buried under a growing mountain of evidence that China actively misled the world about the severity of the new epidemic while simultaneously buying as much personal protective equipment as it could.

Given the conceivable difficulty with getting people to “socially distance” responsibly, something that people have never done in a society accustomed to largely doing what it likes with little fear from its government, the political opposition to masks has remained particularly puzzling. What has struck people as one of the most simple and straightforward ways to improve safety by embracing an obvious form of precaution has been regularly opposed by every public health official for all kinds of reasons right up to the moment that they decided that it was a good idea.

Other concerns about our government’s handling of the pandemic seem even worse. Though Ontario and Canada at large were meant to be better prepared as a result of the SARS outbreak, at every turn it seems that its quite the opposite. The national stockpile turns out to not have been much of a stockpile at all. Ontario’s own stockpile was largely destroyed in 2013 when it was supposed to expire and not replaced at the time (in a cruel twist of irony that expiry date was revealed to likely have been too early). In a recent interview, when Dr. Theresa Tam was asked whether concerns over pandemic preparedness had been presented to the cabinet she was cut off by the Minister of Health and reminded that all conversations with the cabinet are private.

The only thing that might have made up for all these missteps would have been an effective test and trace system that would have over-tested the population so that it could get out ahead of the virus and proactively isolated carriers. By comparison testing remains well below where it needs to be to accomplish this. In fact, to get a clear sense of just how far behind we are on the testing consider that in Ethiopia (ETHIOPIA!) the capital is testing people door-to-door! Meanwhile, here in Toronto it’s unclear whether you should even go in for testing or just stay home.

This isn’t a political rant. I’m under no illusions that another party or another leader might have made better or more decisive decisions. If anything multiple parties are to blame for the failed efforts to deal with the pandemic at every level of government. If I needed to find a single example that encapsulated the level of this failure, please consider that last week the Toronto Star reported that the TTC was trying to find out if they could legally enforce wearing masks on buses and subways! Months after a pandemic has ravaged people’s lives and eroded billions in wealth, only now does the TTC aim to see if it can enforce the most basic form of prevention for buses and subways. Even a cursory glance at where most of Toronto’s cases have been are aligned with poorer neighbourhoods that depend on more public transit.

These questions aren’t academic, and they aren’t partisan. The stakes are very real and the crisis will have a long reach into the future. Canadians have spent the last decade acquiring sizeable debt anchored by home values, with governments and banks happy to pretend that this debt was a form of wealth. Today the financial situation looks considerably worse, and one way to mitigate the damage to the economy would be to reopen the economy with confidence. Sadly, in the hands of our existing political class, such a thing remains out of reach.

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of ACPI.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

The New Class War: Can Our Society Be Made More Equal?

New Class War

Amidst all the various news during this ongoing pandemic, reports that American billionaires are getting richer, particularly those focused in tech, is unlikely to bring anyone much comfort. Though much is often made of income inequality, I tend to believe that inequality in of itself is not a pressing concern for most people. What does stick in the minds of your average citizen is that no matter what tragedy seems to befall the world, the richest keep getting richer, while their own situation continues to erode.

There are two interconnected factors at play here. One is how billionaires continue to do so well. The other is related to declining fortunes and mobility for a middle class that is less middle, but increasingly more class orientated.

The rise of a super-rich has a great deal more to do the dominance of the stock market in an age of globalization than any other single factor. You’ve probably heard some statistic like this before, that in the past a CEO would only have made 20x more than their lowest paid employee, only to find now that the ratio is 278x more than the average worker. Much of this shift has been a result of moving compensation for CEOs and C-level executives into stock options, a move aimed at improving governance, but has instead hyper charged the importance of stock returns in an increasingly globalized world.

Land of Promise

In his book Land of Promise by Michael Lind, he has this to say about globalization and global trade: “Between the end of the Cold War and the crash of 2008, globalization resulted in the organization of one global industry after another as an oligopoly, with most of the transnational enterprises headquartered in the United States, Europe, or Japan…Two companies, US-based Boeing and Europe’s Airbus, had 100 percent of the global market share in large jet airliners. Among their suppliers, the global market for jet engines was divided among three firms: GE, Pratt and Whitney, and Rolls-Royce. Microsoft enjoyed 90 percent of the global market share for PC operating systems. Four firms divided 55 percent of the PC market among themselves, while three companies shared 65 percent of the mobile handset phones. Three firms dominated the world market in agricultural equipment (69 percent) and ten companies dominated the global pharmaceutical market (69 percent). Ninety-five percent of microprocessors (chips) were made by four companies – Intel, Advanced Micro Devices, NEC, and Motorola. Four automobile companies – Gm, Ford, Toyota-Daihatsu, and DaimlerChrysler – manufactured 50% of all cars, while three firms – Bridgestone, Goodyear, and Michelin – made 60% of the tires. Owens-Illinois and Saint Gobin made two-thirds of all glass bottles in the world. Concentration in global finance was accelerated by US deregulation, which allowed the emergence of a small number of US megabanks, some of which grew even more during the Great Recession when, with the support of the US government, they absorbed failing banks, as Bank of America took over Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase acquired Washington Mutual.”

However you may wish to slice it the system of globalization has been a huge boon to the wealthiest globally, consolidating wealth amongst an increasingly narrow group of companies and the people who own the bulk of the shares within those companies. And the more importance share holder returns have taken on, the more consolidated those companies have become.

The second problem I’ve mentioned is that of a middle class that is increasingly stratified. While the wealthiest keep getting wealthy, the middle class has followed suit, locking in wealth and reducing income mobility. While we may not consider life in the 1950s or 1960s particularly egalitarian, aspects about that more sexist and racist time in our past better facilitated economic mobility. For instance, a world where women did not hold many corporate positions of authority and didn’t work after marriage was also a world where women were more capable of “marrying up”. In contrast, today educated professionals marry other educated professionals. A surgeon is less likely to be married to a secretary and more likely to be married to another surgeon. The economist Tyler Cowen has called this “matching” in his book The Complacent Class, with people better able to “match” to those with similar interests and backgrounds. The effect of this “matching” has been to stratify wealth and decrease social mobility within the middle class.

the-class-sketchEducation represents another significant change that is stultifying the middle class. Education, particularly secondary education took on increasing importance in the 1980s, as those with university degrees started to out earn those with just high school, and those with professional designations (like lawyers and doctors) out paced those with just an undergraduate degree. Would more education fix this? Not really. As the cost of education continues to rise and new technologies filter into even white-collar jobs, young lawyers and accountants struggle to find work, while the management of major companies hangs in longer. The return on education continues to decline even as the costs go up, leaving those who come from wealthier educated families financially better off and better socially connected than those coming from lower income families trying leverage education into higher tax brackets.

Similarly, costs of living continue to climb in essentials. In Toronto, where housing prices have climbed steadily for the last two decades, it has given birth to an intransient NIMBYism. Homeowners, having taken on large amounts of debt to get into the housing market are generally protective of their neighborhoods and tend to push back hard on attempts to increase density for fear it pulls down housing value. Poorer neighborhoods in cities like Toronto find themselves pushed out by gentrification, an ironic blend of resistance to development that increases the price of living while denying the development that could keep prices lower for a more diverse group of residents to live together. The effect is one where neighborhoods may indeed be racially diverse, but not income diverse. The effect to a middle class is to be both more precarious and less open.

The response from governments to both these changes hasn’t been encouraging. Playing around with the tax rates, trying to force people into expensive four-year degrees, potentially embracing a universal basic income (UBI) amounts to tinkering with the system, not fixing it. And while UBI has garnered a lot of interest, it smacks of an acceptance of the current situation. If you can’t get ahead, here is some money to make life more tolerable. A population of people dependent of a government stipend is not a population that is very free. But if politicians efforts are well meaning, distrust of them remains understandable, as the political class and billionaire class rub elbows at places like Davos, recommitting to strengthening the very system that seems to be the source of many of the present issues.

Over the past several years I have dedicated this blog to the issues I think that remain most pressing from a financial standpoint to our society, frequently touching on issues of housing prices, technology, anti-urbanization, populism and the middle class. All these issues seem to be accelerating, and if there is a thought that might bind these ideas together it is a sense of loss of imagination on how we deal with major issues. In addition to a consolidation of corporate power and wealth amongst a smaller group of people, we also see fewer companies with IPOs, and fewer companies listed on the stock market in general. There is also less imagination from our political class, which remain wedded to a narrow set of ideas about how to deal with new problems.

Essential Democracy

Successful societies like Canada can be handcuffed by their past achievements, limiting options to things already tried before. But problems that do not get fixed don’t go away. Instead they fester, presenting themselves in other more threatening ways. As I write this there are riots in Minneapolis, ostensibly about the death of a citizen in police custody (part of a long list of Black Americans killed at the hands of police for nonviolent offences) but that riot has swiftly turned towards an affordable housing project and local big box stores in addition to the police. In a 2016 poll, only 30% of Americans born in the 1980s believed that living in a democracy is essential, the lowest since such polling had begun. In Europe polling showed that the core countries of the EU; Spain, France and Italy, had largely negative views about their current economic situation a decade on from the Great Recession.

Postive Economic View Europe

Now, in the middle of this global pandemic, many of these fault lines are being exposed. There may be no better way to sum up our situation than to speak of Walmart, a store that exists and thrives because of the globalized order, importing products from China. According to Ian Bremmer, the largest employer among Fortune 500 companies is Walmart, employing 2.2 million people, easily out pacing any other single company. In 2003 the CEO of Walmart, H. Lee Scott, earned 1500 times as much as a full time Walmart employee.

This trend is not confined to Canada or the United States. It is global, and affects China and India as much as it does the West. But the effect on populations of an economic story that increasingly benefits the wealthiest, while making middle classes more precarious and defensive is to undermine the legitimacy of democracies. The backsliding of democratic countries, and the erosion of the international order is connected to these domestic economic challenges. The pandemic is speeding up this inequality effect, and how we rise to meet it will play a large roll in deciding who calls the shots in the 21st Century.

Miniature people standing on piles of different heights of coins. The concepts of person and wealth.

Author’s Note – In addition to the normally sourced articles I’ve relied on several books for this article, they include:

  • Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland
  • The Retreat of Western Liberalism by Edward Luce
  • The Complacent Class by Tyler Cowen
  • Income Inequality, The Canadian Story (Volume 5), Edited by David A. Green, W. Craig Riddell and France St. Hilaire
  • Land of Promise by Michael Lind

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of ACPI.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

Watching the Crisis Unfold in Real Time

Housing Crisis 2

The economic fallout of the pandemic has garnered many shocking headlines, from concerns over how many restaurants may fail to the sheer number of people seeking unemployment insurance. Some of this is economic rubber necking, basking in the shocking and outlandish statistics generated by the lockdown and pandemic. The real test is still in front of us, determining what is temporary and what is permanent.

up-unemployment-claims-estimates-promo-1585760380714-superJumbo
From the New York Times

Concern that a number of restaurants may not reopen seems a reasonable fear, since lots of restaurants don’t survive normally. The impact to the airline industry will take years to work out, since you can’t just put all those planes back in the sky. It will take time to determine which routes should be brought back first, how many people want to fly and the planes themselves will need considerable maintenance before any of them roll down a runway.

But hope springs eternal. Eight weeks into the lockdown and efforts remain underway to gradually reopen the economy, and in time we will see which parts of our society (not economy, but society) need real help to get back on its feet.

I remain largely optimistic about the speed of the recovery once it’s safe to reopen, but remain cautious regarding existing problems within the Canadian economy that the pandemic will likely accelerate. Problems that were hidden just under the surface will find themselves in the cold light of day, and those problems will have repercussions, many of which will not be easy to predict.

As I wrote back in March (Will Covid-19 Make Real Estate Sick?)

“Problems rarely exist in isolation, and a problem’s ability to fester, grow and become malignant to the health of the wider body requires an interconnected set of resources to allow its most pernicious aspects to be deferred. In Canada the problem has been long known about, a high level of personal debt that has grown unabated since we missed the worst of 2008. What has allowed this problem to become wide ranging is a banking system more than happy to continue to finance home ownership, a real estate industry convinced that real estate can not fail, and a political class that has been prepared to look the other way on multiple issues including short term rental accommodation, in favour of rising property values to offset stagnant wages”

The issue of debt, real estate and short-term accommodations may be one issue undergoing a seismic shift in real time. The website MLS paints a surprisingly changed picture of the rental situation in downtown Toronto. Condominiums like the Ice Condos, located at the bottom of York Street were written about last year because so many of the units were being used for Airbnb. Today they offer hundreds of long-term rentals. The story is not limited to a few buildings either, much of the downtown condo scene, once reserved for Airbnb customers, has suddenly opened to long term accommodation.

Condo Rentals
A snapshot of available rental in May 2020 in downtown Toronto

For a city that only a few months ago was running perpetually short of rentals this change has been rapid, but its fair to assume that many of these landlords are hoping that the crisis will pass and that things will return to normal, with lucrative business in short term rentals resuming. The effect of all these new rentals is not happening in a vacuum. According to Rentals.ca in their May 2020 report, the price of condo rentals in locations like the Ice Condos have dropped by 10%.

Rental Change in TO
From Rentals.ca

The flip side of the real time change has been the sudden collapse in real estate sales. Reportedly year over year housing sales have dropped in Toronto by 67%, and new listing are down 64%. The selling and buying of houses has simply come to a grinding halt, and with it much of the city’s revenue from the land transfer tax, creating a secondary crisis within cities that have depended on the land transfer tax for revenue growth. In a cruel twist on a well-intentioned effort to get government finances under control, Toronto isn’t allowed to run a deficit, a constraint that has turned into a fatal weakness under the pandemic.

It is here that we should stop and consider a reality. In a few short weeks two major sectors of the Canadian economy within the city of Toronto (and Vancouver for that matter) have been radically altered. But this is also a period where we have seen the most government support and extensive economic intervention. Long term expectations have yet to shift. Airbnb hosts wish to remain Airbnb hosts. Homeowners hope to continue to use their houses to expand their financial footprint. But we should take a page from the city of Toronto reviewing its financial books, the real crisis has yet to truly unfold.

Our future contains, but has yet to have pass, the retreat of government financial support. It has yet to put people back to work, yet to reopen universities, yet to ramp up our manufacturing base, yet to know much of anything about moving past Covid-19. Clarity about what governments should or should not do are hindered by China’s resistance to openness and transparency, while other nations that have already faced the pandemic and seemed to recover are running into second waves. There is no clarity about the future.

iStock-518182156 (1) (1)Real estate remains at the heart of the Canadian economic story for the last 20 years. Appreciating housing prices are the chief source for growth in Canadian families’ net worth. Borrowing to buy houses and borrowing against home equity remain our chief sources of debt. Our politics revolves around the tension of needing more housing in certain highly desirable areas while preserving those areas from over development. That dynamic has revolved around a status quo that seemed to have no conceivable end. The pandemic may have radically altered the Canadian real estate landscape regardless of how people feel about it or what they want. Whether we can walk back changes of this magnitude remains very much unknowable. For now we can only watch the changes our society and economy are undergoing and hope that what we are witnessing will be for the best, those changes that have happened, and those yet to come.

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of ACPI.

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc

Journal of a Plague Year – In Defense of the Lockdown

Plague Year

While curves continue to be bent and geopolitics continues to become both more silly and more frightening than anyone ever thought possible, populations of countries remain unsure and troubled about whether they have made the correct choice of trying to beat COVID-19 through lockdowns and aggressive social distancing. Predictions of economic doom run rampant, ranging from serious recessions to the potential for a depression not unlike that of the 1930s.

With nothing to do but sit at home and twiddle our thumbs, either letting our house fall into total chaos or be cleaner than ever (a battle largely determined by how tired I am and how many cookies my kids have had) making predictions and considering alternative paths to beating this virus occupy considerable mental space. How will we know whether the unprecedented steps we have taken were the correct steps to take? What dark and strange future awaits us on the other side? I’m here to put your mind at ease, both because this situation is not unprecedented, and because we may not have had any other choice.

Let’s start with precedent. In an interview with Australian talk show host John Anderson, historian Niall Ferguson mused that future historians would regard our response to the pandemic as a mistake. This is an understandable position given the continued uncertainty around much of the virus. Is it very dangerous? Does it only affect the elderly? Do we even know how many people have it? Undoubtedly the biggest threat from the virus is what we don’t know about it.

But the assumption that it is the lockdown that is hindering the economy are belied by the available evidence. For instance, Sweden has been a focus through much of this since it hasn’t locked down its economy fully. Though schools have been closed and people have been advised to socially distance, restaurants and bars have been allowed to remain open. But estimates are that business has dropped off dramatically. In fact, despite having more of their economy not under lock and key does not seem to have materially changed the country’s fate, with early economic predictions of the contractions expected to be around 7% of GDP. That’s in line with other European neighbors.

In a similar story, the state of Georgia’s efforts to open early were met with disappointing results. People, worried about a virus that has a surprising amount of variability and high level of infection simply don’t want to go axe throwing, drink in crowded bars and go bowling. With the virus still being prevalent the thing restricting economic activity is not the lockdown, it is the virus.

Much is being made of the 1918 Spanish Influenza and this is an understandable place to jump to; the last memorable global pandemic that seriously interrupted the lives of people. Economists studying that event have concluded that “cities that implemented early and extensive non pharmaceutical interventions (like physical distancing and forbidding large gatherings) suffered no adverse economic effects over the medium term. On the contrary, cities that intervened earlier and more aggressively experienced a relative increase in real economic activity after the pandemic subsided.” Other lessons drawn from the 1918 pandemic were not to give up too early on restrictions and that a multi-layered approach was what worked best.

But precedent exists much farther back. In Daniel Defoe’s work “Memories of a Plague Year”, a book once thought to be a work of fiction, but now believed to be based on the diaries of Defoe’s uncle who lived through the last great plague in London of 1665, all the hallmarks of our modern response can be found in that bygone era. Wealthier people escaping to their cottages? From Defoe: “It is true, a vast many people fled, as I have observed, yet they were chiefly from the West End of the Town; and from that we call the Heart of the City, that is to say, among the wealthiest of the people.”

220px-Great_plague_of_london-1665

How about our daily obsession to see if the curve is “being bent” and watching the infection rates? In 1665 concern over the spread of the plague (called the distemper) caused people to look “towards the east end of town; and the weekly Bills showing the Increase of Burials in St. Giles’s Parish…the usual number of burials in a week, in the parishes of St Giles’s in the fields, and St. Andrew’s Holborn, were from 12 to 17 or 19 each, few more or less; but from the time that the Plague first began in St. Giles’s parish, it was observed that the ordinary burials increased in number considerably.”

What of economic activity? It has been estimated that somewhere between 25%-30% of the economy has been restricted, but in 1665 “All Master Workmen in Manufactures; especially such as belonged to Ornament, and the less necessary parts of the people’s dress, cloths, and furniture for houses; such as Riband Weavers, and other Weavers; Gold and Silverlace-makers, and…Seemstresses, Milleners, Shoemakers, Hat-makers and Glove Makers: also Upholserers, Joiners, Cabinet-Makers, Looking Glass Makers; and innumerable trades which depend upon such as these; I say the Master Workmen in such , stopped their work, dismissed their journeymen and workmen, and all their dependents.” You get the idea. The economy shut down.

source

Worried that people believe lunatic conspiracies, burning 5G towers across the world? Conspiracies depend on context, and in 1665 there were plenty of people pushing nonsense ideas, including astrologers spinning stories, and a host of charlatans that were “a worse sort of deceivers…for these petty thieves only deluded them to pick their pockets, and get their money; in which their wickedness, whatever it was, lay chiefly on the side of the deceiver’s deceiving, not upon the deceived.” Amulets, charms and potions, signs of the zodiac and any number of other bogus ways to defend the person from the plague were sold widely to a gullible public desperate for protection.

Great LevelerBut what of the predictions we keep hearing about? That life will be forever changed by the events we’re living through? While I have a great deal more to say about the nature of prognostication, I’ll keep my comments here brief. In general history shows that humans don’t tend towards radical changes following big, but temporary upheavals. Instead, crises like the one we are living through emphasize existing weaknesses within the society.

In his book “The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty First Century”, author Walter Scheidel points out that during the first big years of the plague, which came in the 1300s, the high death rates from plague changed the existing relationship between land and labour. For a society of feudal serfs this meant that serfs could demand wages from their lords, and the lords felt compelled to pay lest their lands remain fallow. Behaviours changed too, but only in as much that hedonism and charity increased to match the scale of the devastation people were living through. In response to our own situation charity, certainly that sanctioned by the government, has been widespread. Whether we might count the volume of baking as a form of hedonism will be left to others to decide.

Wages & Covid

But we should largely discount predictions of an economy collapsing and a society that will not wish to do anything ever again. Cruise ships, house sales, air traffic and eating out will return as confidence returns, though there will be losses along the way. But the real damage to the economy, and the people within it, will likely remain along lines that have already been established. As fewer Canadians work in good manufacturing jobs and more work in the service sector, earning marginal wages, they will continue to take the brunt of the economic hit of the lockdown. Just as likely will be that efforts to decouple production from China will lead to greater automation in manufacturing. In other words, more of the ingredients at the heart of the widening inequality gap.

The response to the coronavirus feels novel, to us. But in the scheme of history there doesn’t seem to be many other viable options. Life will return to normal not when the lockdowns are lifted, but when the virus is gone. But if we’re going to do something with our time it would be better spent figuring out how we’re going to address a worsening crisis of inequality, or brace ourselves for the next round of populist agitation.

Black Death 1

Information in this commentary is for informational purposes only and not meant to be personalized investment advice. The content has been prepared by Adrian Walker from sources believed to be accurate. The opinions expressed are of the author and do not necessarily represent those of ACPI.

 

by The Walker Report of Walker Wealth Management and Aligned Capital Partners Inc