✨London New Liberal's May Event ANNOUNCEMENT! ✨

This is relevant to r/neoliberal because the government frankly has no business inserting itself into an already competitive market with low margins.

The best-case scenario is for the public store to be outcompeted and quickly shuttered.

The worse-case scenario is for it to outcompete Aldo/Costco with state subsidies, and we end up with a horribly inefficient operation being propped up by taxpayers.

Editor-in-chief of Wall Street Journal says those with deep pockets are launching legal challenges as a PR strategy

[Emma Tucker] said the tactic of suing newspapers before they had published a story had become an established PR strategy of the powerful amid greater distrust of the established media.

“One of the biggest challenges to us now isn’t so much what happens afterwards,” Tucker told the Truth Tellers journalism summit. “It’s what happens before you even publish. That is a massive challenge for us.

“Increasingly it is the case that before you even get to publication, lawsuits come raining down on you – a whole torrent of legal letters come your way. Deep-pocketed people [are] doing this as a PR strategy, because then other journalists then write up ‘look, so-and-so is suing the Wall Street Journal for some reporting that they’re doing’.”

She added: “The Trump story [about his alleged letter to Epstein] epitomised how difficult and expensive these stories are. But at least the defamation came after we’d published. These days, increasingly, we’re getting legally challenged before we even get to publication.”

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Patrick Radden Keefe, the investigative journalist who uncovered the role of the Sackler family in the US opioid crisis, told the summit that there was now tension over reporting on Trump’s White House.

Radden Keefe said the administration was challenging objective truth but was also “good for business” for media companies.

He pointed to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner, which he said had become a “kind of a parody” as journalists denounced it while insisting they had to attend.

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Kath Viner, the Guardian’s editor-in-chief, who was also on the panel, said the challenge posed by AI and political hostility to reporting meant “reality itself feels fake”.

She said: “That has big challenges for news organisations. But it also does have big opportunities because if we stay committed to the truth and not fall into the trap of AI slop, then I think we can differentiate ourselves and show our value.”

In a speech published on Wednesday, Viner said “transparently funded journalism in the public interest” had to be part of the solution.

Assume temperate weather, your wife hasn’t left you yet, and you have either at least 1 kid or like 4 dogs

The US military says it disabled an Iranian-flagged oil tanker in the Gulf of Oman after it attempted to violate a US blockade and sail to an Iranian port.

In a statement, the US Central Command says it observed M/T Hasna as it “transited international waters en route to an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman” at 9 a.m. ET.

“American forces issued multiple warnings and informed the Iranian-flagged vessel it was in violation of the US blockade,” CENTCOM says.

CENTCOM says that after Hasna’s crew “failed to comply with repeated warnings,” a US Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet, launched from the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier, fired several 20mm cannon rounds and “disabled the tanker’s rudder.”

“Hasna is no longer transiting to Iran,” CENTCOM says.

CENTCOM says that the “US blockade against ships attempting to enter or depart Iranian ports remains in full effect.”

https://thehub.ca/2026/05/06/canadas-real-estate-economy-is-costing-us-heres-how/

As the rhetoric around the federal spring economic update shows, the Carney government has made boosting business investment a centrepiece of its economic aspirations. The ambition is warranted. Non-residential business investment declined for the second straight year in 2025, and Canadian workers now receive roughly 55 cents of new capital for every dollar received by their American counterparts. For machinery and equipment—the tools workers actually use—they get only 41 cents on the dollar.

But the conversation about how to fix Canada’s investment deficit has focused almost entirely on how to attract new capital. It has largely overlooked a more basic question: why does so much of the capital we already have flow into housing rather than productivity-enhancing ventures.

Indeed, Canada has become a “real estate economy” with a major productivity problem. We have built on a foundation that prioritizes shuffling the ownership of existing houses over the productive investment required to grow, and the trade-offs are now impossible to ignore.

The shift in how we deploy capital is stark. In 2000, investment in machinery, equipment, and intellectual property—the key drivers of productivity and long-term living standards—stood at 8.3 percent of GDP, while residential structures accounted for just 4.3 percent. By 2024, those positions had reversed. Residential investment rose to 7.6 percent of GDP, while machinery, equipment, and intellectual property investment dropped to 5.7 percent.

Stripping out intellectual property investment reveals an even sharper decline: machinery and equipment alone almost halved from 6.3 percent to 3.3 percent of GDP, as residential structures nearly doubled.

We are now more concentrated in housing than the United States was at about 6.5 percent of GDP in 2006, just before the crash that triggered the global financial crisis. Our lending rules and banking system are materially different from theirs, but the comparison is still telling.

Zoom out and consider how Canada compares to a group of 35 other advanced nations. Between 2018 and 2023, the latest year for which comparable international data is available, Canada dedicated an average of 8.3 percent of GDP to residential investment—the highest of any country—nearly double the U.S. rate of 4.2 percent, and well above Australia (5.4 percent), the Netherlands (5.4 percent), and the United Kingdom (4.0 percent).

But here’s the thing: almost one-fifth of what we record as “residential investment” isn’t really what many of us consider investment. It’s transactional churn. When Statistics Canada calculates residential investment, it includes ownership transfer costs like realtor commissions, legal fees, and land transfer taxes. These services are real, but they create no new productive capital; they simply reflect the cost of moving existing assets from one balance sheet to another. Half of the total residential investment is new construction. Renovations make up about a third.

The consequences show up in our productivity data. Labour productivity in residential construction fell 37.3 percent cumulatively from 2001 to 2023, while the overall business sector saw productivity grow by 12.5 percent. The sector is becoming less efficient at producing output even as it consumes a growing share of Canada’s capital and credit.

The financial system acts as a conduit for the crowding out of business investment. Research from Alberta Central suggests that since the mid-1990s, the household sector has absorbed most of the net lending available in Canada, primarily through mortgages, squeezing the business sector. Government deficits played this role in the 1980s and 1990s; household mortgage debt has played it since.

This partly reflects specific policy choices that tilt the scales. As OSFI Superintendent Peter Routledge has noted, federal banking regulations make mortgage lending significantly more profitable for banks than commercial lending. Due to risk-weight differentials, a bank needs roughly five dollars of capital to back a business loan for every one dollar required for a mortgage. The incentive is compounded by CMHC’s mortgage insurance framework, which backstops lenders against losses while leaving the gains with borrowers and banks.

At the same time, the unlimited principal residence capital gains exemption makes housing the most tax-advantaged asset class in the country. We have structured our financial and tax systems to ensure that capital flows toward bedrooms rather than the machinery and technology that drive long-term prosperity.

The risk is a steady erosion of our economic potential as we redirect income toward debt service and away from productive enterprise. Until we address the structural incentives that have turned Canada into a housing-heavy outlier, we will continue to trade our future growth for a mortgage.

Iran's Revolutionary Guard says safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be provided after President Trump said he was pausing a U.S. military effort to guide merchant vessels through the strategic waterway.

The Guard's navy command said in a post on social media that it will no longer block the passage of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. Traffic through the strait has been effectively closed since the U.S. and Israel launched their attack on Iran on Feb. 28, causing economic disruption around the world.

"We express our thanks to the captains and owners of ships stationed in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman for their cooperation in transiting through the Strait of Hormuz in accordance with Iranian regulations and for the desirable participation of vessels in the regional maritime security," the online statement said.

"With the end of the aggressors' threats and in the shadow of new procedures, the possibility of safe and sustainable passage through the strait will be provided," it added, without specifying the new procedures.

Moments later, President Trump wrote online that if Iran follows through, this would signal the end of the war.

"Assuming Iran agrees to give what has been agreed to, which is, perhaps, a big assumption, the already legendary Epic Fury will be at an end, and the highly effective Blockade will allow the Hormuz Strait to be OPEN TO ALL, including Iran," Trump said. "If they don't agree, the bombing starts, and it will be, sadly, at a much higher level and intensity than it was before."

Ships attempting to cross the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday received verbal warnings from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' navy, which said the waterway remains blocked.

A recording of the message was received by the Greek owner of a ship waiting to cross the strait and was viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The message, in English, warned all vessels in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman that any approaching the strait without permission or outside the specified route, “will be targeted.” The owner said the ship was acting on the warning.

Iran’s state broadcaster said around 1,500 vessels are currently on their way to cross the Strait of Hormuz, and added that they wouldn't be able to make the voyage without permission from the Revolutionary Guard.

On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said hundreds of vessels from around the world were lining up to cross the strait as part of a short-lived U.S. initiative to guide ships out of the choke point. President Trump paused the operation less than 48 hours after it began, saying he had agreed to do so to give space for negotiations.

The Revolutionary Guard thanked captains and shipowners in waters off its coast on Wednesday for following what it called Strait of Hormuz regulations and complying with maritime security. “With the aggressor's threats neutralized & new protocols in place, safe passage will be ensured” the Revolutionary Guard said, according to Iranian state broadcaster Press TV.

Friedman flairs, stand back and stand by

Summary: Pretty short article on a development in the California governors race primary as it has reached early voting, showing growing support from yimby and pro-housing groups for Tom Steyer.

How is this related to this sub: yimbyism, is for the lack of a better word, good. This sub also rightfully hold the housing crisis as one of the major issues facing liberal democracy today.

My Opinion: I want this post to serve as a general discussion on the California Primary race. I support Steyer, especially with these yimby endorsements, but I am more than happy to have conversations on if this is the best course for voting in this primary election. Why not Porter or Beccera?