Feasting on the COVID-19 carrion: Here's Canada's post-pandemic economic outlook
The future doesn't look too pretty, but at least suckers will not be born every minute
The recovery will not be "V" or "W" shaped, as widely predicted, but represented by a squiggly doodle around the intersection of the X and Y axis of an unscaled graph.
We expect bulbous rather than linear effects.
While oil prices are now at record lows owing to a glut in supply, future demand and pricing will be influenced by the insanity, stupidity and depravity of various exporting regimes.
Renewables like open sky mining and the wishful thinking of the chattering classes will be offset by the transition of several major pipeline projects to pipe dreams.
The Norwegians are stepping up exploration as they move away from it. Drunk on cheap money and already on shaky shaking ground, shale oil is set to turn shill.
In concert these variables means the anticipated per barrel price of oil will return to a wild guess.
In other commodities we see wheat rising, rubber bouncing back and coffee up. Fungi remain inscrutable.
Consumer spending will rebound after people have forgotten that they realized they didn't need half the crap they were buying before the shutdown.
The market will jump … from the highest storey
Large urban housing markets will crash as more people choose to flee cities for the forest and holes dug in the earth by hand. As glass towers reliant on elevators are now worthless, we expect downtown commercial real estate to jump from its highest storey.
With the middle class finally stripped of any purchasing power and vast oceans of dead capital being hoarded by a small cabal of zillionaires, central bankers will declare inflation extinct and sacrifice a goat to mammon.
While airlines worldwide are facing insolvency, Canadian carriers are unique in refusing to refund cancelled tickets and so will be able to ransom the retained travel credits for a government bailout.
We anticipate Canadian airlines will return to predatory pricing practices to keep competition out of the marketplace and that executives of the companies will be back raiding the till within three years.
The arts and entertainment sector will remain at a virtual standstill. By 2025, arts and entertainment in Canada will be limited entirely to its administration and to attendant government bureaucracy.
Drunk on cheap money and already on shaky shaking ground, shale oil is set to turn shill.
Big Pharma and Big Medicine are positioned to make out like bandits.
Return to normal economic conditions will mean the abandonment of support programs to individuals and a resumption of universal corporate welfare.
Surveillance capitalism will morph into track-and-trace capitalism.
A new, but familiar, fiscal framework
Given the levels of household debt and the number of Canadians who are a paycheque or two from insolvency, Canadian banks faced widespread default. This was addressed with the pre-emptive bank bailout program, CERB.The banking sector will make gains from the extension of loan terms granted without the stoppage of interest accrual.
In the short, medium and long term, the banks are positioned to feast from the COVID-19 carrion and profit enormously from the pandemic.
The federal government will establish a new fiscal framework with the provinces, once it is determined how such an arrangement can chiefly benefit Quebec.
Suckers will now be born every 20 seconds.
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