How Canada and Turkey Are Putting Themselves Into Their Own Great Depression and Economic Collapse - Jack Chapple

On July 17th of 2024, the international monetary fund released a report stating that Canada would be the fastest growing economy in the g7 in 2025. And soon after, every business magazine, publication, and even the current ruling party of Canada itself, parroted this notion about how Canada is doing great with its economy.

And this became quite bothersome to me because if a person were to just look at these headlines, they would walk away thinking Canada has an amazing economy. But yet, just taking an extra 2 seconds, and looking at the actual metrics, you would see that not only is Canada’s economy doing horribly, but its technically in a recession.

And this brings me to a topic that I care about a lot. And that is how powerful people, governments, and numbers themselves, can lie. And what Canada is doing now is one of the last signs of an economy before it collapses.

Throughout history there have been plenty of examples of countries lying about their numbers, but I want to focus on one that is quite comparable to Canada’s current situation.

You know, if you were to wind the clock back to the late 1920s and early 1930s, we would enter an economic era in the united states called ‘the great depression’. However, during this time, there were quite a lot of political leaders and powerful people that pretty much refused to acknowledge what was the worst economic conditions in the country's history. One of these people was herbert hoover.

Herbert Hoover, before becoming the poster child for economic disasters, was a globe-trotting mining engineer and the accidental philanthropist. He struck it rich before 40, digging up shiny rocks and turning them into shiny dollars. During World War I, he miraculously organized global food relief, feeding millions and earning the title “The Great Humanitarian”—a nickname that became hilariously ironic when he later couldn't feed America’s unemployed during the Great Depression.

The Great Depression, a time when the American Dream took a nosedive and crash-landed into a nightmare. Imagine, the 1929 stock market crash left millions without any wealth or savings, but there stood Herbert Hoover, the nation's ever-optimistic cheerleader-in-chief. If only clapping harder could’ve brought the economy back, Hoover’s applause would have been thunderous enough to wake the dead.

In the immediate aftermath of the 1929 crash, Hoover played the role of a motivational speaker with an unshakable belief in America’s economic resilience. "The fundamental business of the country... is on a sound and prosperous basis," he declared in December 1929, presumably while ignoring the millions watching their life savings evaporate. It’s almost as if Hoover believed that repeating the mantra enough times would magically transform despair into prosperity.

As unemployment rates skyrocketed, Hoover’s administration displayed a level of denial typically reserved for reality TV show contestants. By 1930, it was clear the economic downturn was not just a minor hiccup, yet Hoover remained steadfast in his rosy projections. He assured the public that the worst was over, just as the unemployment rate soared towards an unprecedented 25%. It’s as if he thought the power of positive thinking could fill empty stomachs and re-open shuttered factories.

Hoover eventually rolled out some public works programs, like the construction of the Hoover Dam. Sure, it provided jobs, but it was a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean of unemployment. Hoover touted these projects as grand solutions, as if a single dam could hold back the flood of economic despair. Meanwhile, breadlines stretched longer than the construction sites, and shantytowns—dubbed “Hoovervilles” in his dubious honor—sprouted across the nation.

In 1932, Hoover introduced the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC), which funneled money to banks and big businesses in hopes of jump-starting the economy. Of course, this “trickle-down” approach worked about as well as giving a parched man a water bottle with a pinhole. The RFC’s funds mostly lined the pockets of wealthy executives, while the average American continued to scrape by, wondering when they’d see any of that promised prosperity.