Spin it Frank Spin it

Meanwhile the mills are still losing millions of dollars, the staff imployees still have not gotten their 10% wage decrease back and all the mill workers that lost their jobs are still not working. Recovery? The only recovery is on the government side of forestry...they are still spending like the money is growing on all the bug killed trees.

Is that a joke... from my perspective I see things much differently.

How I see it is in the past we have always been a market taker industry... meaning that we take what the market is willing to pay, which for the most part has been a profitable transaction for the forest companies.

Now currently we are still a market taker, but no longer at a profitable transaction price. This is obviously due to the US banker induced housing bubble that has messed with our primary market mover.

In the future with the pine beetle fall down constraints and dwindling global reserves of marketable timber we will see in ten years (and not likely before then) a point were we will transition for the first time from market taker to market maker. In ten years time we will have an industry that sets its price relative to its costs for a finite resource no different then the oil industry of today... in twenty years the BC forest industry will be like printing money.

In the last few years we lost half our lumber industry jobs, and we will likely lose even more before we become a market maker, but as a market maker setting our contribution margin (essentially profits per unit of production) to our end product the BC forest industry will employ less people, but have higher profits to increase the economic multiplier effect of the forest industry on the health of the local economy with much less volume. This will happen regardless of the Chinese market and quiet likely will price the Chinese out of our market.

The key here is the future opportunities to our communities and entrepreneurs. Do we consolidate the industry to the monopoly capitalist bankers (and their Chinese partners in economic crime(war))... or do we try to preserve a free enterprise system that will maximize local ownership and local opportunities, and a return of profits to local communities? This is a critical transition time for future generations and whole communities.

Past generations didn't build this country to hand it over to foreign bankers.

IMO looking back in twenty years future generations will see they were sold out for party time politics by short term opportunistic political establishments and their bought and paid for politicians. Pat Bell will be seen as a politician that shakes hands with foreign interests like a wood chopper chopping wood at so much a cord, but with out a clue to the ramifications of his ideology he himself tries to sell.

If I was a conspiracy theorist I would say it would be mighty coincidental the way things have played out. Wall Street bankers are diabolical in the extreme and they take great pride in the more diabolical their plans. Who's to say they didn't have a plan to consolidate the forest industry with forecast knowledge that it is only mere decades away from becoming a market maker due solely to scarcity of resources. Who's to say the pine beetle epidemic wasn't assisted by political criminality (Dunkley Lumber case) to speed up and ensure future scarcity of resources... who's to say the housing bubble in the US wasn't engineered by these very same bankers with the knowledge of what kind of impact it would have to the forest industry recession creating secured shareholder opportunities for industry consolidation into favored hands... who's to say the depression isn't an opportunity to grab control over the means of production in the forest industry for pennies on the dollar and effectively removing potential for future competition... who would disagree that if they are successful then they will in effect have a means of printing real money creating real wealth with a scarce product that they control.

We are being sold out by our politicians for sure and its not just the here and now being sold out, but rather our future and the future of generations to come. Its sad to see our livelihoods sold out by dumb union reps, compromised politicians (intellectually and financially), and a MSM media that just covers the story as it unfolds and not the strategies that are in play limiting the real options of individual citizens to make informed decisions with all the facts and possibilities on the table.

"Dunkley Lumber case" ??????

Eagle one, you ARE a conspricay theorist! :) That being said, i am not sure of the merits of some of your arguments but i think one thing needs to be pointed out: Part of the reason that Canfor and others are operating at a loss is because we make them do so. We have 5 year cut quotas they have to follow (roughly at least) which prevents them shutting down altogether in tough times. Our forests are still quite tightly regulated compared to many places . In BC the public still owns, and has rights to more than 90 percent (i believe thats the number) of the land. On these lands forest companies lease the timber rights, they dont own them.

Leoleo, I should have said the Carrier case where they had their beetle kill license pulled way back when it all started and were later awarded nearly $200 million in damages by the courts for the political interference in the canceling of their license.

Caranmacil, thats a good point, but not as solid as you would think when one looks at the tenure system in detail, and ultimately its those who own the means of production (the mills) that will control the value flow of profits in the industry. With the planned BC liberal changes to tenure your point would become outdated IMO.

ps I'm a coincidence theorist... ;)