Cost of Gang wars

I havn't have the time to write a full post for a while, as I am still deeply addicted to my online fictions and busy with work, but I just thought of this. What is the cost of a gang war? How to accont for it?

C = Cost of getting caught +Man power + tools + losses + misc.

I am just going to throw in some random ideas, i don't think I have time to fully analyse this. 

1. Increase risk of conducting illegal activity.

I would expect that during a gang war, there will be more visible criminal retaliation activities, such as shootings that we see reported frequently in the Vancouaver area. This will definietly raise public concerns, pushing the RCMPS to react to criminal activities. The public will be more concious about criminal activities around them, and will probably be more informative to the police.

2. Increse demand of tools. 

I expect the parties involved in the gang war to have higher demand for tools used to participate in a gang war (ie. Guns, cars, bullets, etc) This will raise the market demand for the tools.

3.Loses

In a war, there will be winners and losers. To the loss might be vaulable goods or invaluable goods. It's easy  to calculate the loss of vaulabe goods such as drugs or cars, but more difficult to calculate the loss of an arm, a leg, or the life of someone.

4.Cost of getting caught.
Typically, when you get caught by the authorities, you will wait for your trial, assuming the police have a case on you. The cost of getting caught could include the cost of doing time (loss of income from participating in illegal activity),  legal costs, and other associated costs. 

Just some random ideas....

There's also a public cost to this. I'll ellaborate next time.

Political Drama

Canadian politics is getting intersting. 
It can be both good or bad. 
It's good, because more people are talking about the developments, more people are thinking about what they believe in, and many people are expressing their views.
This is good for Canada. More Canadian care about our country will make our country better. 

This can also be bad, because we are undergoing a financial crisis. 
In the mid of a crisis, not only do we have to suffer through the economic pressure, you also have to endure a dysfunctinoal government. This will delay the process of reviving the market and creat more problems. It also increase our stress level.

It'll be interesting how this draba plays out. 

Coalition? We will be doomed! ( more than now)

I will be frank. I think the coalition between the 3 parties, Liberal, NDP and Bloc Q., is a very very stupid and scary idea. 

First, they are pissed that the government want to take away their funding in an economic crisis. Second, they want to overthrow the current conservative government. 
Third, they have no plans on how to function with each other once in power. Who's gonna be PM? Dion? Layton? Duceppe? or would it be one of the previous Liberal PMs? This is completely outrageous. With Dion back, are they going to add that stupid carbon tax that they were pushing during the last election a few weeks ago? What about Layton? Is he going to start increasing spending to fund social programs and run a bigger deficit? What abut Duceppe? Is going to save the auto/forestry/manufacturing industry in Ontario, and make the rest of us pay for it?

This is so stupid. We don't want another 300 million dollar election in 2009 just because the political parties can't get off their high chairs and go ask their supporters for some money to pay off debts. It's not like they never need to do so before, as the public funding was only brought in 6 years ago. Are they that lazy? How is this a democratic process to take power? It's going to turn nasty in the end and taking our economy down with it, if they really do it, and I am so going to  say I told you so in their and their supporter's face. 

I sort of understand why no stimulus plans was included in the update, as our economy pretty much follows the US's, and we should wait for Obama and his people to announce their plan to avoid wasting efforts and resources. However, I think it would be a good idea to lay out some ideas so that people understand that the government is planning to release funds to start stumulation the economy anytime, instead of sitting on their big chairs and contemplate political moves. Really, I think they need new economic policy advisors who are competent and knows what's going on.

The Fisical Update

I just read the Story on CBC News regarding the various cuts that we should be expected to see to help the Canadian government to cut down spending and solve the deficit problem.
The first thing I saw people complaining about is the loss of the subsidy that the political parties receive based on the number of votes each party got from the last election. Each vote worth $1.95 of our tax dollars.

Party - Subsidy expected from last election (Percentage of Revenue)
Conservative -$10 million (37%)
Liberal - $7.7 million (63%)
NDP - $4.9 million (57%)
Bloc Québécois- $2.6 (86%)
Green - $1.8 million (65%)


So the Conservatives will lose the most in terms of dollar values, but will still be better off than the other parties since they have such a strong fundrasing base.

However, people are commenting about this loss of subsidy to the political party they support will cripple them and demise democracy by giving those who have the means more political power than the others.
It didn't make sense to me why they weren't complaining about why we must spend our tax dollars on such matters. If people are really supportive of their political party, why just go vote on voting day and give them nearly a twoonie to spend, instead of going to vote and make the effort to send them the money? I think they would be more than happy to get a $5 bill instead of just a buck and ninety five cents from their supporters.
Political parties do not need the taxpayer's money to raise money. Given enough pressure, I am sure they can find better ways to finance themselves and fend for themselves. Let's spend the money elsewhere. That amount of tax money is good enough to support other plans to make our lives better.
Also, I do like the cutting or freezing salaries of MPs, ministers, and other civil servants. Cutting down the perks and benefits that goes with the job is good too, show that when the general public suffer, they should feel our pain as well.

However, I do think that all these probable cuts that has been leaked to the media seemed a little too small to be of any real help to offset the deficit that would probably appear on the budget. I hope the Ministry of finance will be able to come up with better plans to control spending, like economize daily operations, and produce a better balanced budget.

I don't know why people are so freaked out about running a temporary deficit, because the way I see it, we will be back on the surplus again, so it will be balanced, eventually.

Citi Rescue

As expected, the US government bailed out Citi bank. Big surprise anyone? No I don't think so. Since the government had bailed out other banks and financial groups already, letting one of the big banks fall is highly unlikely, if said bank is one that have various branches all over the world and would cause global chaos if it did fell. After all, bank do have their uses, such as increasing the supply of credits, and mediate people's finances. Plus, the bail out plan up lifted the stock market, and I am very happy to see the finance stocks in the green again. Hopefully the series of quarter result reports will not hamper stocks in the following weeks. It does make the trend a bit difficult to predict.

No help from the government for the auto sector, as no bail out plans can be seen for the big auto makers that's breaking down. Well, that's kinda expected, since their competitiveness in the world market is not very high, and we are expecting a decrease in demand for new cars due to the financial crisis. It also didn't help when the company isn't really doing so well these couple of years. I suppose the government won't really let GM fall, because it's one of the root American companies, and to think some foreign company will come in and buy it up and turn it into a non-American brand? I think not.

On a side note, I just read an article about beer company increasing production, and I suddenly remembered a professor of mine talking about the depression period. I am going to assume that I am expecting people to consume more alcohol as a side effect of economic down turn. Dunno where I can go look up for data to prove this theory though. I am not sure if Stats Canada would have statistics on alcohol consumption for the depression periods.

The Big Dip, again, why am I not surprised?

So the news of the day is again the drop of the TSX. It had plunged 500 pts since it opened, and although the market had reduced the drop some what in the middle, it had closed with more than 750 pt. drop. The dip was blamed on the falling price of oil, and bad financial news as TD had reported big losses.
Is it just me, or did anyone think that investors are being over reactive about the recovery of the economy from the financial disaster? Well, more reactive than they should be, because if they had taken into account the events that happened the last year or so, they should not have panic and sold their way out of the market like today. I mean, yeah, sure, TD lost some money, like you didn't expect them to? I understand that TD had been lucky to not be part of the sub-prime mess, but it'll be very unlikely that it won't be effected in the financial crisis that's going on now.

As for the decline in crude oil prices, I think it's just a panic period that people are going through. There is only a limited supply of oil on this planet, and a very large demand that's growing at a rate much higher than the growth rate of the oil supply. Logically, the price should be going up, and up, and up, until enough people can't afford to drive their cars, and really start to look for a replacement for crude oil. This short term panic thing will certainly blow over, and people will be kicking themselves when the price of oil is back at $90+, and they had not bought the energy stocks.


The above bad news should benefit short term investors very much, because if they are logical, they would understand that the dip is just temporary, and if they didn't get in now, they'll miss out on making some pocket change for Christmas.

Financial Disaster: What to do if you have spare change?

There is no doubt that we are stuck in a financial disaster, and no one is certain if we've reached the bottom yet. With the development of economic policies after the last economic disaster caused by the financial system, I really hope our government and ministry of Finance will be able to come up with better solutions and get us through this faster.
The impact of this disaster differs for everyone. However, for those who doesn't suffer greatly from the stock down turn and still have some spare change left in their bank accounts, I would advise them to invest.

Not trying to take pleasure in other people's misery, but right now is a really good time to invest. Good company's stocks are devalued due to the decrease of investor confidence, meaning that you can buy stocks at a discount. But you do have to realize that patience is the key to be able to gain from this. For those who enjoy a little more risk, you can try observing a few reliable stocks, get to know how investors are buying and selling these stocks, the low point, the temporary increases, etc, and play it. You buy low and sell when it goes up a little, making a modest gain in a short period. Due unstable market we are facing now, I believe that if you are not too greedy, you can make some pocket change for Christmas.

As I wrote the above content at 3 in the morning, I'm probably not as coherent/logical as I normally am. I will be going to bed now...