Trudeau is ending use of the Emergencies Act.
(twitter.com)
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The answer to the bank accounts bit is yes. The government announced it was unfreezing the accounts it had frozen and wouldn't freeze anymore.
Tens of thousands of people across Canada have spent the past week moving assets around and pulling cash out because of those measures, whether they had anything to do with the protests or not. All of the big Canadian banks are too heavily leveraged to be able to absorb that. They've borrowed huge amounts with using money in people's accounts as collateral, and people just yanked millions of dollars out of those accounts.
I would not be surprised to learn that there were several profanity-laced phone calls between the bank execs and the government about that, and Trudeau has destroyed investor confidence with it. Who in their right mind would invest in any sector of the Canadian economy if the government is going to give itself the power to freeze your assets on a whim?
Trudeau is done. The announcement is him trying to save himself, but it's not going to be enough.
This is an extremely important point that not enough people know. Most banks are extremely leveraged, which is to say they have a lot of debt and not much money. They make money by taking your money and investing it elsewhere. What this means is when you deposit $1000, the bank almost immediately spends it all on an investment. When you then withdraw it, the bank is actually out a thousand dollars until the investment pays off.
Bank runs are a legitimate way to fight back, because it puts them in a terrible situation. They have no money, and now you're asking them for money that they legally cannot deny you (unless you're a truck driver, apparently). So now they have to go even deeper into debt in order to satisfy your legal right to your own property.
If enough people do this simultaneously, the bank is going to take a hit of many millions of dollars. If enough people do it simultaneously and for a long enough period of time, the bank is going to fail.
Its why banks closes when shit hits the fan and inflation sky rockets. Everyone pulling out money at once to gtfo.
Thanks for the info. Guess there's something to be happy about here. Don't see Trudeau going anywhere though. Canada will forget about this in a week once things in Russia and China heat up and the truckers do their thing in America. He'll get another term just fine.