Who Should Pay After the Crash?

Car crashes come and car crashes go. Who shall pay nobody knows, but one things for sure the impact will be felt after the crash. That's right, all those dollars you spent on your car has gone down. Say it was worth $15,000, now it's $10,000. That's called diminished value or accelerated depreciation as we call it in Canada. Whatever it is, it's not usually covered in your insurance policy.

Would you buy a car that was in an accident? Probably not. That's the same thing the buyer would think if you were trying to sell your car if it had an accident. Would you like it? Probably not again. Yet this is the reality of this world. We want things with no problems and that makes things hard for you: the owner. No insurance company wants this to become the law because they don't want to pay for something that they can't quantify. You see if you drive it until the wheels go under, there is no diminished value. Thats the reason they won't pay. Usually people have to lawsuit just to get the money and brokers always try to keep it on the down low.

Georgia, USA is probably the only place where it's probably the law that diminished value must be compensated for the owner of the person in an accident regardless of who's at fault. They claim that since it's your property, you have the right to sell it and you'll never know if your never going to ever sell it. Since it's your property the insurance company is supposed to put you back in the place you were prior to the accident, isn't that the reason we pay for insurance. To get our money back?

Many brokers will fight over this issue. Some may even lawsuit against a law such as this to be passed. Yet know this fact, all the claims they make are false. The sky shall not fall, insurance rates will stay the same and you'll have a happier state/province.

Canada's Economy: It's not great.

Canada, a country that welcomes immigrants and refugees from around the world and a country with freedom and a great atmosphere. Yet when I take Canada into economics, it doesn't do well on my list. Canada may be the best economy in the G7, but don't see that for too long.

Previously the Bank of Canada minister issued a warning. He said we have more debt than our equity. This should have brought a warning to all to be more careful with their money, but are we? We may have tighter lending laws, but is it useful? The US had bad lending laws and banks lent money to anyone without researching them. Look at Canada, our unemployment rate is 8%, which is high. Also, many Canadians aren't going to be able to pay their mortgage if one goes out of work or if interest rates go up. What does that tell you? Well, it says that people get qualified before, but can't make the payments later. Isn't that like the US only with a delay. Lets take Lehman Brothers as an example. They sold companies at a discount and bought them back at a higher price. At first it was a profit, but it swallowed and destroyed the company didn't it?

Canada also doesn't have much to offer to the world. Look at our logging industry, we have it but nobody is buying. Banking, forget about it how would they survive if Canada increased interest rates from the lowest rate in years. Mining, at least there's some hope there until gold collapses soon. Medical, what do we have there? We have a low number of drug or research companies. The list could go on forever and with Canada having a low money supply and a high deficit. I think it's safe to say its only a matter of time.

Lets look at housing for a moment. People borrowing money that they know they can't pay back if interest rates were to rise. A bubble in markets like Vancouver and Toronto. The average home price at $344,000. Interest rates at all time lows, I think we get the picture. The housing market is at a bubble right now. The federal government has created it and is trying to stop it from popping, but it will devastatingly. The bubble will pop like how people said the Dot-com bubble would't pop or how banks were too big to fail in the US and the US housing market. They said it wasn't possible, but it happened. They tried to stop it, but it happened. How about Japan? They had a bubble and they barely borrow money to buy anything. They save money rather than Canadians and Americans. Look at their housing market, it collapsed too. Yet Canadian analysts say it's not possible, but what happens if the TSX would crash 200 points in one day. What if the Bank of Canada rose interest rates? What would happen analysts? What would happen!

They say it's impossible to try and trick you into spending more to sustain the economy. Canada could've crashed earlier and not be in such a big mess than if it were to crash now. Look it interest rates rose, the housing market would be full of foreclosures. People aren't saving a lot anymore and more people are out of work to pay their bills and mortgages and are taking a lot of debt. People try to lie to themselves saying it's a good investment without thinking of the side effects.

If the crash were to happen, it would've happened earlier as Canada wouldn't have hit hard. The harder you fall, the more you lose than to have done it earlier in life or history. It's the same with economics.

How iTunes Could Improve With Competition

iTunes is the most widely used music service in North America and probably the world. The service has a 80% market share with it's iTunes store. The iTunes store is growing and will soon throw competitors off the racks of shelves. The question is: Why hasn't anyone challenged it?

The iTunes Store has a scot free almost no competition streak. The only competitors are Napster and Rhapsody which are only music not like the all in one iTunes Store package. iTunes has been hard to beat with Apple's power and the fact that they have okay quality music for a reasonable price. The only times a competitor would improve is because of competition like the situation in Canada where wireless carriers are fighting for customers like there's no tomorrow with Bell, Telus and Rogers yanking their throats with unbelievable deals not seen before. Now lets look at iTunes. Previously it offered low quality music at the same price, but that changed thanks to BitTorrent. The site OiNK's Pink Palace used to offer high quality music in all formats at the highest bit rates in each format. When it got shut down, iTunes quickly increased the bitrate of their music and made it DRM free.

That doesn't explain why a new company shouldn't take the crown away. What's shocking is that iTunes hasn't changed much over the years that is worth noticing. Ever since OiNK it's stayed the same. iTunes needs a new competitor,but it's not getting one. I believe a new service can work out the things companies won't do so they can maximize profits. Now, I'm sounding all Mao Zedong-ish but lets think about the people for a second. If we don't give them what they want won't there be rebellion. If something legal like OiNK started, then there wouldn't be such thing, would there. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails was a member and said at the time of closure "I admit I had an account there and frequented it quite often. At the end of the day, what made Oink a great place was that it was like the world's greatest record store. Pretty much anything you could imagine, it was there, and it was in the format you wanted. If Oink cost anything, I would certainly have paid, but there isn't the equivalent of that in the retail space right now." He criticized services like iTunes for being poor and low-quality.

The question is when will we see change. Not so likely. I want to lead that change. Nothing in this world is perfect, but we can make it close enough to call it perfect.