WSJ Fallout

In light of the takeover the WSJ by Rupert Murdoch the ripples are happening even in Canada.

The Bad News:

One of Torstar Corp.'s five controlling families has signalled it will soon begin selling off shares in the tightly held newspaper publishing company in an effort to diversify their investments.

The Thall family, part of the voting trust that steers Canada's largest newspaper by circulation, the Toronto Star, informed the company that it intends to divest "some or all" of its non-voting shares in Torstar Corp.

Of course there is always a silver lining, if Murdoch can't buy the Toronto Star there is always the National Pest.

National Post readers across Atlantic Canada will now have to travel to Halifax if they want to buy an actual print copy of the national newspaper.

Following an annual business review of the paper, Post management decided to limit sales to only one Atlantic Canadian market — the metropolitan area of Halifax — as of the end of July.

This latest move follows another decision, announced in late March, to limit Atlantic Canadian distribution of the Post to provincial capitals only.

At that time, the paper blamed the prohibitive costs of distributing the paper regionally after circulation numbers are factored in. Home delivery to the Atlantic region was also discontinued in 2006.

Similar reasons were cited this time, with the paper also blaming difficulty distributing the Toronto-produced and printed paper in a timely manner.

"As we took a look at our business model, looked at how and where we're distributed across the country — and frankly no newspaper has 100 per cent distribution across the country, it's just too big — we made some hard decisions," said Steven Hastings, National Post vice-president of marketing and reader sales.

The National Pest continues to decline in circulation, and thus withdrawing from being a National Paper to one that is just another Toronto Rag.

Upon its much ballyhooed introduction in October 1998 by media mogul Conrad Black, the National Post offered a bold new, neo-conservative voice in Canada's national newspaper landscape, offering a different take on the news and current affairs as well as a jazzy, colourful look compared to venerable newspaper the Globe and Mail.

However, the Post soon began amassing large debts from the heavy spending incurred during its startup period. Black eventually sold the paper to fellow media scion Izzy Asper and his CanWest Global Communications (in two stages over the course of 2000 and 2001).

In 2001, management of the still-young newspaper imposed severe budget cuts, laid off a significant percentage of its staff and nixed several sections, with a plummet in circulation the ultimate result.

Wow that was some business plan. Typical of the right, overwhelmed by all their pompous social conservative blathergab when it comes to good old fashioned capitalism they are utter failures, bleeding cash and blue bloods.

SEE:

Liberal Or liberal Media

Lord Black No Robin Hood

Conrad Black

Criminal Capitalism


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Stelmach's Robber Barons

Speculators, the lowest and sleaziest form of capitalist, in Alberta's hot housing market, are now the beneficiaries, not of social embarrassment and ridicule as they once were, but of the protection of the State.

Moral betrayal at Monarch

Shock that low-income housing is sold after being built on subsidy

The Stelmach government needs to close a loophole in its tenancy law that let owners of Red Deer's Monarch Place bypass a mandatory one-year's notice before turning the affordable-housing project into condos, said Red Deer-North's Conservative MLA.

Tenants in Monarch Place believed they'd have 12 months before their homes became condos. But they instantly became condos in July; once the units are sold, tenants have 90 days to clear out.

How, many want to know, can this happen?

"You can convert a rental premise to a condominium without any notice to the tenants, as long as you're not asking the tenant to leave in order to accomplish the condominium conversion," says Eoin Kenny, a spokesman for Service Alberta.

"In this case, they weren't asking the tenant to leave. They were merely selling the suite."

The numbered company that bought Monarch Place -- a subsidiary of Everest Developments Ltd. in Edmonton -- never told residents its plans for the complex. Registered documents show surveyors began devising the condo plan for the firm on March 11, four months before it took possession.

Residents thought they'd get one year's notice before a condo conversion, a requirement the Stelmach government recently imposed. But 1327545 Alberta Ltd. legally avoided giving any notice, through a provision that lets it convert and sell units as long as it doesn't clear out the tenants.

Many residents say they don't know who their landlords are. Haut said he has never spoken with the buyers.

Richard Cotter, the Everest subsidiary's lawyer, said his client was unaware Monarch was an affordable-housing complex until after it made its purchase deposit and condo plans.

In July, the company took possession and sold all units to condo investors. Rent increases and for-sale signs soon arrived.

Of course there is federal and provincial funding for affordable housing, but no controls to stop it from being condo-ized.

Since the Canada-Alberta Affordable Housing Program Agreement 
was signed,more than $98 million has been allocated towards the creation
of 3,683affordable housing units throughout the province. Federal and
provincial contributions to affordable housing projects are enhanced by
contributions from other partners including municipalities, local community
housing authorities, non-profit organizations and private sector companies.

Without regulations to control condo speculators, and rent controls in place there is no such thing as affordable housing for anyone in Alberta.

Bridge to Community: The Affordable Housing Crisis in Alberta, a documentary by Brent Spiess, takes an in-depth look at the housing issues in Calgary and how the boom is leaving some people behind. But while Calgary is the film’s focal point, Spiess hopes that Albertans in general can benefit from the film and connect with the issues presented.

“We think the issues here are pretty much the same as they are in Edmonton or Grande Prairie or Red Deer or Fort McMurray,” Spiess said.

In May 2006, the average price of a resale home in Calgary was $358 214, up 43.6 per cent in one year. Similarly, Edmonton experienced a 22.9 percent increase that same year, as average sale prices hit $242 936. The market has had a tremendous effect on renters, and it was in this context that Spiess began the year-long process of making his documentary.

Like his predecessor, King Ralph, Eddie is kicking the poor and disabled when they are down.

While the citizens suffer at their hands the Stelmach regime dodders on protecting special interests like housing flippers and other real estate speculators.

leading Keynes to make his famous observation (in his General Theory):

Speculators may do no harm as bubbles on a steady stream of enterprise. But the position is serious when enterprise becomes the bubble on a whirlpool of speculation. When the capital development of a country becomes a by-product of the activities of a casino, the job is likely to be ill-done. And his reference point was the 1920s, when speculation, frenzied though it already was (especially in the USA) was, by comparison with its post-World War II evolution, embryonic.

What's more important than housing for Tories? Why golf courses. That is after all where the business of government gets done.

Alberta's Progressive Conservative government allocated more than $7 million in grants to golf clubs over three years, and almost all the money went to courses in Tory ridings.

More than half of the money was allocated in 2003, the year before the last provincial election, according to public government documents.

See:

Pay 'Em What They Want

And New York Has Rent Controls

Stelmach Blames Eastern Bums

He Can't Manage

Drumheller Bell Weather

Stelmach Tanks

Alberta Deja Vu

Padrone Me Is This Alberta

Income Trusts

Housing


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Tin Man

Gee who do you think might have been responsible for this?

In the grip of speculators, tin hits 18-year high

And has lots of cold hard cash to invest?

China

China is also one of the major tin-producing countries; the main producing area is the Gejiu complex in Yunnan which has accounted for a large proportion of the total output in China for many years.

Total mined production of tin in 1990 (as ores and concentrates) was 211,000 tonnes, with the major producing nations being Brazil, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bolivia and Thailand.

Thus an alliance that once was part of the non-aligned anti-Imperialist bloc now becomes aligned with the new Imperialist player on the block, who can throw some coin their way in the global marketplace.


SEE:

Turning Lead into Gold

China Burps Greenspan Farts Dow Hiccups

China: The Triumph of State Capitalism

China No Longer Red Nor In The Red

US vs China for Global Hegemony

Afghanistan or Africa

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