Somebody who makes a lot of loot being pretty consistently wrong.  Dan Gardner in the Ottawa Citizen gives us the facts, man, just the facts:

Beware the rock star business guru

When a slick and smiling Jeff Rubin appeared in a Harry Rosen ad earlier this year, it was clear that the former CIBC World Markets chief economist has become more than a practitioner of the dismal science. He is a brand. A rock star. An international guru with a best-selling book and a long list of corporations eager to pay very large amounts of money to hear him forecast the future.

Unfortunately, the future the guru sees isn’t pretty.

“What will 2011 bring?” he wrote on his blog [it's here]. “Tripledigit oil prices.” Unless you happen to have an oil well in your backyard, that’s bad news. “Our last encounter with those prices was brief but decisive,” Rubin wrote. It was in 2008. The shock to the economy was so severe it caused the global recession.

So should we batten down the hatches in 2011? I don’t know. Unlike Jeff Rubin, I claim no powers of prognostication. I did, however, write a book about why expert predictions routinely fail, how experts delude themselves about their failures, and why people are drawn to the sort of expert who is most likely to be wrong. So I know something about the subject.

And what I know is that Jeff Rubin is an almost eerily perfect example of the sort of expert people should not listen to — but do anyway…

“Don’t think of today’s [oil] prices as a spike,” he told the Toronto Star in January, 2008, as the price was shooting upward. “Don’t think of them as a temporary aberration. Think of them as the beginning of a new era.”

In April 2008, Rubin released a CIBC report titled “The Age of Scarcity.” “Despite the recent record jump in oil prices, the outlook suggests that oil prices will continue to rise steadily over the next five years, almost doubling from current levels,” he wrote. Oil would be $130 a barrel in 2009; $150 in 2010; $190 in 2011; and a terrifying $225 in 2012.

The report says nothing about oil prices sinking the economy. On the contrary, it says both the Canadian and American economies will grow steadily in the second half of 2008 and throughout 2009. The Toronto Stock Exchange would soar to near-record levels in 2008 and hit 16,200 in 2009.

In June 2008, with oil prices rising even faster than Rubin expected, he revised his call. Oil would top $200 by 2010, he forecast…

In short, Rubin’s forecasts were utterly wrong…

There’s lots more. Mr Gardner is a bright light in our dim journalistic firmament–more here.

Update thought: Mr Gardner’s bugbears include misuse of statistics and unclear thinking. This excerpt from a Globe and Mail editorial today is a prime example of the problem:

…
Children being caught in a crossfire or shot as bystanders is not rare [emphasis added] in Toronto. Three other examples: 15-year-old [a child?] Jane Creba, shot dead on Yonge Street in 2005 while shopping; Shaquan Cadougan, age 4, shot in the knee while outside his home, also in 2005; and 11-year-old Tamara Carter, shot in one eye, on a city bus in 2004…

Four–or should that be three?–examples over six years. How many young people are there in Toronto? Hundreds of thousands? Their chance of being shot “in a crossfire or shot as bystanders” is almost infinitesimally rare, if words have meaning.

Mark
Ottawa

…Rolls and you Rolls alone.  Smitherperson not in T.O.:

Could the people just be revolting? Meanwhile in Ottawa, back to the mainstream. Elementary, my dear Watson. Pity.

Mark
Ottawa

UPDATE

What the latest reaction from the left reminds Adrian of:

Die eiserne Kanzlerin hat gesprochen (with video):

Merkel says German multicultural society has failed

The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel: “lmmigrants should learn to speak German”

Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have “utterly failed”, Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

She said the so-called “multikulti” concept – where people would “live side-by-side” happily – did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate – including learning German.

The comments come amid rising anti-immigration feeling in Germany.

A recent survey suggested more than 30% of people believed the country was “overrun by foreigners”.

The study – by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank [some Canada-related material from them here] – also showed that roughly the same number thought that some 16 million of Germany’s immigrants or people with foreign origins had come to the country for its social benefits…

“And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other… has failed, utterly failed.”

In her speech in Potsdam, however, the chancellor made clear that immigrants were welcome in Germany…

Earlier, from Adrian:

Toronto Too Crowded? Uh, Yeah.

…To criticize Toronto’s growth of just under 100,000 new residents every year could be seen as an attack on the multicultural identity that the leftwing apparatchik in city council lives by.

…It’s one thing to welcome “diversity”, and quite another to willingly ignore the massive ethnic blocs that have been created by the GTA’s absorption of the lion’s share of immigration.

When I left my hometown of Brampton in 2008, the city had become densely crowded with South Asian immigrants, primarily Sikh Indians who have developed a vast cultural enclave inside of Canada. As Gurmukh Singh wrote in the Toronto Sun last year, immigration has brought “rapid ghettoization” of mini cities in which multiple ethnic enclaves have become isolated compartmentalized quarters.

Yet this “diversity” still comes with a price that not only makes Toronto less affordable for Canadian citizen and immigrant alike, but puts more pressure on the base with each additional arrival…

Plus from me:

Multiplying like…

As for Kaputt, well worth the read though somewhat gruesomely embellished.

Mark
Ottawa

A Cannonball Press report, August 26, 2020:

New York (CBP): Russian TU-95 Bear bombers yesterday were intercepted and identified over three northern cities, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal, by F-16 fighters of the US Air National Guard responding under the American Aerospace Defense Command [more here].

A Pentagon statement said the interceptions were a routine indentification of Russian aircraft approaching US airspace that posed no threat to American southern sovereignty.

In response to questions at her daily news conference Pentagon spokesperson Amelia Earhart said that the interceptions were performed by F-16s instead of F-35s since the primary role of the stealthy 300 Joint Strike Fighters now with the US Air Force was initial attack on ground targets against adversaries with heavy and effective air defences.

Ms Earhart responded, upon further questioning, that it would be some time before sufficient of the problem-plagued F-35s [more here and here] could replace F-16s and F-15s in the role of continental air defense.

In the country formerly known as Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper of Alberta issued a statement saying that if only Canada had bought F-35s–and only F-35s–the Russians would have been deterred from creating such an annoyance for his American allies.

When asked why the Alberta’s 24 AF-18s based at Cold Lake had not been used to intercept and identify Russian Bears, Mr Harper replied that Alberta’s sovereignty was “non-negotiable“.

While F-35s might have deterred the Russians, the prime minister added, his AF-18 Hornets were perfectly capable of dealing with any real threat.  As would be the 24 Super Hornets Alberta has recently contracted to buy from Boeing.

Mr Harper also noted that Alberta was very interested in Gazprom’s offer to increase its stake in the oil sands to 68%.

Earlier in Toronto, Ontario Prime Minister Dalton McGuinty in a statement said his government was pleased that the United States was capable of dealing with issues that might affect its own airspace.

Quebec President Gilles Duceppe, replying to a question in the National Assembly, said his country’s 12 QF-18s, based at Bagotville, had not been scrambled since “One does not want to break eggs when there is no need for an omelette.”

President Duceppe went on to reiterate his government’s intent to replace the QF-18s with Joint Strike Fighters if an agreement, now under negotiation, could be reached to assemble the aircraft in his country.

Professor Michael Ignatieff of the University of California at Berkeley, in a Tweet to the Cannonball Press, said:

bearish antecedents time real canadians debate if better off as Americans Canucks need my help

Much more here.

Update: From the current government:

Conservative MP Laurie Hawn, a former CF-18 fighter pilot, just twitted (or is it tweeted!) this, laughing off a question about why Canada is buying 65 Joint Strike Fighters. Here is what he writes:

“NDP MP Jack Harris asks why Canada is buying 65 F-35s while “similar” country Norway is only buying 48. It’s a good question. Canada is 26 times area, 7 times population and 3 times GDP. Jack’s math would demand between 144 and 1248 F-35s for Canada.

I guess we’re being pretty prudent with only 65, eh?

Ya gotta laugh.”

Not quite, Mr Hawn. Norway has, like Canada, selected the F-35; but, also like Canada, no contract has been signed yet. And there are tough negotiations going on with Lockheed Martin–one wishes our ministers would speak as cogently as this Norwegian one.  It should also be pointed out that Norway had a competition for its new fighter and that the planned purchase was approved by its parliament.  Both unlike Canada.

Mark (“Cannonball“)
Ottawa

Pretty world class though one hates to admit it.  From Foreign Policy magazine’s ranking of the world’s top 65 cities:

…

…

Montreal at 31, no Vancouver. More here.

Mark
Ottawa

This from a LA Times piece in praise of Canada:

…
“U.S. businesses are certainly looking at lessons learned from Canada,” said Bart van Ark, chief economist at the Conference Board in New York. “In a nutshell, Canada has been very pragmatic in dealing with the economy.”

Its approach to immigration is one example. With one of the highest immigration rates in the world, Canada has been receiving about 250,000 permanent residents annually. About one-fourth of the new arrivals gain entry through family relations, but more than 60% are admitted as “economic immigrants” — that is, skilled workers, entrepreneurs and investors.

In the U.S., it’s basically the reverse…

But that 60% figure for economic-class immigrants is very misleading. It also includes the dependents the primary immigrant brings with him–and usually it is a “him”. Thus these figures from 2002 (I doubt the ratio has changed much–see Update):

Skilled Workers: 53,437
Spouses and dependents: 69,920
Total entering under skilled worker class: 123,357

In that year some 229,000 people came to Canada legally as residents, immigrants plus refugees. So 54% were skilled worker class–but only some 23% of those immigrants were individuals actually admitted on the basis of their qualifications under our points system [see here for its big problems].  And a great number of the female spouses from quite a few of our source countries were pretty unlikely to work.

So when you read that 60% figure for economic immigrants in the LA Times you can effectively cut it way down. Then it doesn’t look so impressive.  I’ll bet you haven’t seen the real facts about those figures in our major media; takes a quick bit of research.

The story does note this:

…
“The big issue is how immigrants, though highly skilled, aren’t getting jobs as easily,” Reitz said…

No shoot. Here are some pretty bleak realities:

Recent Immigrants are the Most Educated and Yet Underemployed in the Canadian Labour Force
March 12, 2009
…
Canada’s recent immigrants are better educated, on average, than native-born Canadians but they fare worse in the job market. While 15.8% of native-born Canadians had a bachelor’s degree or higher in 2006, 25.4% of Canadian immigrants were degreed. Despite this difference, native-born Canadians earn an average total income of $64,239 compared to $48,488 for immigrants. And unemployment for Canadian immigrants was 6.6% -nearly twice of what it was for native-born Canadians (3.5%).

The gap between immigrants and native-born Canadians is most pronounced among immigrant receiving provinces and metropolitans. Degreed immigrants earn 70% of the incomes that native-born Canadians do in Ontario, but 90% in Prince Edward Island [but some degrees are, er, more equal than others.].

The same pattern can be observed among metros as well. In Toronto the average income of immigrants was 58.8% of native-born Canadians [scary "Since the turn of the twenty-first century almost fifty percent of immigrants and refugees coming to Canada have settled in the Toronto Census metropolitan area...]“…

And note this:

Immigrants new to Canada have a difficult time finding work, and face unemployment rates twice as high as those among Canadian-born citizens, according to a Statistics Canada study released Monday.

The study found 2006 unemployment levels among immigrants who arrived in Canada between 2001 and 2006 was 11.5 per cent, as compared with 4.9 per cent among the Canadian-born population.

The federal agency suggested that a lack of Canadian work experience, language barriers and unrecognized foreign credentials posed the largest barriers to integrating new immigrants into the workforce.

The study notes that unemployment rates in 2006 fell to 7.3 per cent among immigrants who had been in the country between five and 10 years [still 2.4 per cent higher than Canadian-born]…

Not pretty, eh? Ottawa, we have a problem. If you want more numbers, lots more numbers, have a look here:

Facts and figures 2008 – Immigration overview:
Permanent and temporary residents

Update: The OECD’s reading of 2008 figures:

…
One in four permanent migrants came to Canada through the employment channel, and 1 in 8 on the basis of humanitarian residence permits. Family migration accounted for 62% of total permanent migration [emphasis added] in 2008…

The OECD is clearly doing what I did above and including dependents of primary economic-class immigrants in family migration. Which puts a whole different perspective on the numbers.

Upperdate: Post is in National Post’s “Full Comment“:

Mark Collins: Immigration Canada = skilled workers, unskilled spouses, no jobs anyway

Mark
Ottawa

…the brave revolutionaries continue their struggle against the police state, Eatons and the corrupt capitalist hegemony:”

Terry Glavin joins the juxtaposin’.

Mark
Ottawa

The headline is almost black comedy:

“Suicide barrier on Bloor Viaduct worked, but jumpers went elsewhere: study”

Really? You mean that the investment of $6 million into a view-obscuring fence aiming to keep people who want to snuff themselves out didn’t actually prevent their dedication to doing the deed somewhere else?

Colour me shocked. And while you’re doing that, colour me annoyed as well.

So long as people cluster in large cities, there will inevitably be a sizable demographic of people who will want to kill themselves. Although the Bloor viaduct was a convenient place to do it, the “state-of-the-art” $6 million fence did nothing but force them to find another place.

The thing that really upsets me, I suppose, is that the city probably thought it was doing something helpful, logical, and humane when it made the decision to blow $6 million on a suicide barrier. And think about it: they had to get structural engineers, architects, highly specialized workers, to deal with the problem of keeping people from going “splat” off Bloor street.

And what did it accomplish? No more clean up on the DVP below. The cleanups now take place elsewhere.

Here’s another place that cleanups soon won’t be taking place:

The Toronto Transit Commission vowed earlier this year to set up barriers at each of its 69 subway stations, although the TTC doesn’t know where the approximately $10-million per station will come from.

“[Barriers are] definitely seen as being effective within the suicide-prevention community,” said Alexis Martis, communication officer with B.C.’s suicide-prevention centre.

“Anything that’s going to get someone to take a minute and pause and think about it pulls them out of that space … can be very impactful.”

Really? Sounds like wishful thinking. Someone who is inconvenienced by barriers to keep themselves from jumping in front of a subway likely won’t have to wait long to find another suitable location to off themselves. After all, it’s a city. Such places are filled with dangerously high perches and fast-moving vehicles.

You can’t bubble wrap a society to prevent people from killing themselves. The best you can do is offer support services and hope they’ll take them. Beyond that, building suicide barriers in the belief it will prevent suicides is just engaging in specious reasoning.

Steve Janke expounds on, amongst other things, the Orwellian “duckspeak” of, er, activists:

G20 Violence and Layers of Orwell

…Duckspeak is George Orwell’s term for speaking without thinking.  This is not “thoughtless” in the sense of saying something hurtful but not realizing it was hurtful until it was too late.  This means, literally, “not thinking”.  The approved party line just pours out of the speaker’s mouth, and his higher brain functions are not even engaged.  Lots of the writings from the rioters have that Duckspeak quality:

With power and vision, people of colour, indigenous peoples, women, the poor, the working class, queer and trans people and disabled people will create and lead alternatives; will decide for themselves; will transcend the systems that oppress them and keep them from talking to one another.

Oops, “disabled” with a small “A”.  Drop and give me twenty reasons to hate capitalism before you even think of picking up that phone and calling your parents for money to pay the rent this month.

OK, I couldn’t resist.

Just look at that paragraph, which ends the “About Us” page and so ought to really drive the point home, and figure out what it says.  It doesn’t really say anything.  They will use “power and vision”.  Specifically what power?  What is the vision?  How does the “system” keep them from talking to one another?  Is that the same system that has given them cell phones and the Internet?  And then there is the standard list of victim groups, a list that just gets cut and paste from paragraph to paragraph and from page to page.

Most of it doesn’t really say anything, and where it seems to say something, it’s demonstrably untrue.  It is just the standard rhetoric of the anti-globalization vandal that they use to justify the violence.

I doubt they even think about it all that much when they write it out.  They just do.  It’s what they say.  It doesn’t mean anything, really.  It’s boilerplate.

Duckspeak…

Mark
Ottawa

We’ve all heard and seen the G20 protests and the police response on media and social networks, but very little has been paid attention to the actual summit itself. Below is the 19-page declaration for world leaders to follow up on in the months and years following the summit.

For the most part it’s very dry stuff, but if I could summarize it all, I would say that it calls for targeted stimulus spending, deficit reduction, and greater lending. I find this particularly confusing because overextending credit is seen as partially responsible for the financial meltdown.

Perhaps ironically, the G20 leaders concluded that the IMF and World Bank recommendations and reforms would lead to a medium term global output of almost $4 trillion more, with an increase in tens of millions of jobs, lifting people out of poverty, and reducing fiscal imbalances across the globe. Why is that ironic? Because it emphasizes jobs, growth, and poverty reduction, a primary criticism of G20 protesters.

Of course, I don’t necessarily blame people for being skeptical that increased lending and spending will accomplish these stated goals.

The declaration praised international financial institutions for their global response to the financial and economic crisis, by mobilizing financing, including $750 billion by the IMF and $235 billion by the Multilateral Development Banks. Here is their chart, on page 16, outlining the pre and post-crisis annual lending rates:

Just slap more credit on that credit card! You’ll never have to pay it off. Just continue to make the minimum payment from cradle to grave.

So much for encouraging savings, restraint, and cutting taxes. The G20 called for more wealthy countries to help poorer countries by getting consumers to buy products made overseas, and thereby supporting those economies.

Which, I guess, means it’s time to go out and buy a television.