Alberta Pipelines, Australian Gas, & Data Centers… As the World Burns

Alberta Pipelines, Australian Gas, & Data Centers… As the World Burns

At least 12 people have been killed and 23 are unaccounted for after one of Spain’s deadliest wildfires broke out in the south-eastern province of Almería as the country endures its second heatwave of the summer.

The regional government of Andalucía said the victims, four of whom are believed to be British, had died while trying to escape the flames near the village of Bédar in the municipality of Los Gallardos.

“There are no words for such pain and I want to offer our condolences to the families of the dead,” Antonio Sanz, the region’s emergency minister, said on Friday morning. “This is terrible news and today the hearts of the people of Andalucía are in mourning.”

-             Fast-spreading wildfire kills at least 12 in southern Spain, Guardian

 

… this is worse than a mistake, it’s a crime scene.

-             JM Hamilton 

By Gregg Wall (7-11-2026)

As the summer heats up, the planet warms, and Europe and North America burns, the climate crisis denialism among elected shills increases, seemingly, in correlation.  

In Canada, PM Carney dumped a $20 billion in infrastructure commitments on British Columbia (BC) Premier David Eby’s lap right before announcing a new pipeline in Alberta that would cut across BC.  Mr. Eby and some First Nations tribes had objected to more pipelines, but apparently the price was right, as Eby subsequently backed off and said it really wasn’t his decision to make.   

It’s no longer the private sector's decision either, apparently, as there are no private sector backers at this point, except for a 10% stake by Pembina pipeline corporation.  As of this writing, the Canadian taxpayer is expected to shell out for another corporate welfare project that the American owners of the Alberta tar sands appear to have limited or no interest in.  Oil and Gas majors and OPEC are more interested in profits than increasing global supply and bringing down prices, so a new Alberta pipeline appears to work counter to their interests.  Besides the Americans have the best deal going, a captive lock on Alberta oil, which is mostly land locked.  Unsurprisingly, Carney and Alberta’s Premier Smith left out a great many inconvenient facts in their pipeline announcement, such as:

·      American shareholders own Alberta O&G;

·      Americans haul the Alberta product South for huge profits;

·      Americans collect billions in subsidies and free pipelines from the Canadian taxpayer;

·      America underpays Canadian royalties and taxes, under a private sector extraction method, versus Norway’s public sector extraction methodology;

·      America leaves hundreds of billions of oil field externalities and liabilities for Canadians to pay… there is zero push by Premier Smith and the UCP government to hold the Americans accountable and collect adequate collateral, bonds, security, taxes, and escrow to pay for cleanup and remediation (and the bill is climbing fast);

·      And, when Canada exports to Asia, it’s still at the direction of the Americans, who profit… not Canada;

·      If in fact, the Americans continue to collect the profits and dump hundreds of billions of liabilities, externalities, healthcare costs, environmental damages, economic damages, forgone opportunity costs on the Canadian people… so that for every barrel extracted, subsidies and externalities exceed royalties and taxes… there is little doubt Alberta O&G is a net loser for Canada.  Especially when we consider that renewables hires far more people (3X per dollar of CAPEX spent), while the oil patch is gutting its workforce. 

·      In fact, nearly all the positives about oil and gas… how it’s a source of revenue to fund social programs… can be said about renewables, w/out the planetary destruction hangover, boom bust cycles, the externalities, the opportunity costs, endless corruption, the endless Middle East wars fought to keep O&G prices elevated, etc.   Note too, unlike the Oil Majors and OPEC endlessly manipulating supply, corporations will have a harder time manipulating the sun.  Corporate greed will have a hard time manipulating hydro and wind, which probably explains why billionaires, oligarchs, the politicians are in no hurry to see Oil & Gas go and for renewables to take over.  There’s an awful lot of money to be made in manipulated markets.

Seems odd that the Harvard educated Carney would leave out all this information and facts.  What could have been an opportunity for Carney to educate Alberta at the pipeline announcement, became little more than a box checking event, a one-sided sales pitch, another prospective taxpayer funded public works/jobs program in a dead end and dying industry, and a pitiful appeal to separatist traitors in Alberta.  The pipeline will do nothing to lower retail gas prices for Canadians, who are presently paying $6.32 CAD per U.S. gallon… an absolutely criminal figure for a nation so rich in oil and gas.  Many separatist leaders have already gone on record as non-plussed by the Carney-Smith pact.  Carney and Smith will likely both be out of office long before this latest proposed pipeline is completed, if it gets off the ground and doesn’t stall out mid-stream.

The reality, the cost benefit analysis is in on Alberta’s/Canada’s foray into a privatized oil and gas patch, versus Norway’s publicly owned North Sea oil patch:

Alberta Heritage account: $31billion.

Norway Sovereign wealth fund: $2 trillion.

Factor hundreds of billions in unpaid externalities and liabilities… and Canada is in the hole.  In total, Canada is in the hole, as well, for hundreds of billions in revenue that should have gone to the Canadian people (see Norway), not American O&G and private shareholders, plus hundreds of billions in externalities & subsidies.  And now, we are compounding this epic environmental and financial disaster by a failure not to convert to renewable energy rapidly enough.  Forgone opportunity costs for the public (the public extraction Norway model), plus hundreds of billions in externalities and subsidies, shifted onto the backs of the public… this is worse than a mistake, it’s a crime scene.

 

 

 

Good times, good times… up next was Premier Smith’s announced Meta/Zuckerberg data center.  Many Albertans are well educated on data centers and have seen Americans raising hell and organizing politically against oligarchy data centers, surveillance state data centers, police state data centers, Orwellian/German Stasi data centers, EVIL DATA CENTERS.  It’s hard to miss.  Specifically, Americans object to what I refer to as the data center tax: higher utility costs, higher electricity bills, depleted water supplies, noise and environmental pollution, eminent domain, confiscated farmland and property.  The usual American scam: privatized profits, while costs, expenses, taxes are shifted onto the backs of the families, the public, the taxpayer.  And there’s the corruption and the knowledge that US democracy is crumbling as many data centers are crammed down the public’s throat with zero or limited input and consultation.   The data center tax is a serious nut, at time Americans are drowning in an affordability crisis. 

But there’s not an oligarch that Queen Dani, seemingly, won’t cater to.  And there’s not a citizen’s back that Queen Dani, seemingly, won’t step on and break with her cowboy boots if they dare get in the way of a data center and a data center press announcement.  To cut to the chase, seemingly missed by Dani and UCP was another inconvenient fact: Americans are running billionaires, surveillance/police state data centers, and all the chaos data centers deliver out of the United States (at least newly proposed data centers).  So, in her lust for headlines, it should surprise no one that the Queen of Failure and Greed opens her arms wide for what Americans are overwhelmingly rejecting.  

Besides, data centers increase O&G demand, increase lowballed taxes and meager royalties from UCP’s beloved O&G industry… and with that increase in demand so goes the increase in the aforementioned environmental damages, healthcare costs, poisoned communities, and burned up towns.  Meta was originally going to build out their own energy source, so Alberta was told, only for the public to find out that Meta is hooking up to the main utility grid, at least during construction and early stages of data center operation (w/ Meta’s own grid and power source operating in 2030, or so we are told).

It’s a never-ending cycle of hell with the UCP government.

Which should give Alberta pause, as Dani has big plans for many, many more data centers. 

As for Alberta and Dani’s Stampede surprise, it’s a good time to remember that data centers and their build out are occurring before AI is actually determined to be commercially viable.  Moreover, these data centers serve: 

·      Oligarchs;

·      Greed;

·      Wall St.;

·      Possible asset bubble;

·      Politicians desperate to keep the neoliberal economy stumbling forward;

·      Surveillance State/Police State;

·      Delay the death of Oil & Gas; 

·      Billionaire capture of AI tech.

The obvious solution: Citizens need to shut down the data centers, go full NIMBY… and insist upon oversight, review, and a seat at the table in regards: AI use, AI misuse, and AI development.  Alberta is no exception.  Given how loathed and despised billionaires, data centers, AI, and corrupt/criminal politicians have become… the public should exercise considerable leverage in insisting that data centers run on renewable energy and are forced to clean up contaminated water and operate on said water (rather than consume fresh water).  Plus pay taxes equal to the upper most income tax bracket Canadians face, w/ no deductions, no loopholes.  (This assumes Canadians want data centers; many Canadian will not want data centers under any conditions.)  It certainly would be an improvement over Carney’s and Dani’s shock and awe corporate welfare campaigns.  Ditto for Carney’s pipeline to nowhere, the one with zero, or limited, private sector support for a fuel source that is lethal.  

Finally, and to place a bow on this piece, I wanted to write on Australia’s rebellion over its exploding LNG industry but I’m running out of both steam and time.   The Australian LNG crisis should sound very familiar to Canadians: American owners, exorbitant state subsidies, Americans running away from cleanup and remediation, externalities shifted to the taxpayer, lowballed taxes and a manipulated tax code.  

Gee, sounds like a business model: buy off local politicians, steal as much & many resources as possible, repatriate earnings to the U.S., and screw the locals on royalties and known costs and expense.  Plus, charge extreme prices in the Aussie and Canadian markets.  Australians are speaking up… Canadians should do the same.

The same old American scam: privatized profits, socialized cleanup, infrastructure, expense, bailouts, and externalities.  Meanwhile, the industry is exporting as much LNG as possible to Asia, manufacturing a shortage of gas for Australia, and gouging Aussies in the process.   

Sound familiar, Canada? 

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2026

Goodbye Mr. Greenspan…

Goodbye Mr. Greenspan… 

His predecessor, Paul A. Volcker, had established that the central bank could hold off political pressure for lower interest rates with a tight-money strategy in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In the process, Mr. Volcker gave the Fed tremendous credibility in the financial markets and bequeathed to Mr. Greenspan plenty of room to shape policy in Washington.

-      Alan Greenspan, Fed Chairman Through Prosperity and Crisis, Dies at 100, NY Times

 

By Gregg Wall (6-27-2026)

Mr. Greenspan, former FED chair... serving presidents Reagan, Clinton, and two Bush presidencies… died Monday.  Greenspan was 100 and said to be suffering from Parkinson's. Before Reagan, Greenspan advised Nixon and served as an economic advisor to Ford.  Greenspan was an Ayn Rand enthusiast and exhibited great fondness for economics, finance, markets, and laissez-faire capitalism.  After Fed Chair Paul Volcker demonstrated FED independence and strangled inflation… in response to a lost decade and weak predecessors, with double digit rate increases… POTUS Reagan replaced Volcker with someone who was a great deal more flexible, perhaps more of a politician. 

Greenspan’s fondness for deregulation and diminished regulatory controls dovetailed nicely with Reagan’s fondness for laissez-faire, and supply-side economics and Clinton’s deregulation, neoliberalism, and triangulation in the ‘90s.  Faced with the crashes in ’87 and the Dot.com bubble, Greenspan embraced a strategy that has by now become rote: easy money, a flood of liquidity, slashed interest rates, and lower capital/reserve requirements for Wall St banks.  This strategy, the Greenspan put -- essentially the bailout of banks, billionaires, and markets as too big to fail -- became the Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell puts. 

Mr. Greenspan, known as the maestro, nearly escaped all this unscathed and was highly regarded by many; but the 2008 financial crash did tremendous damage to his firm belief in self-regulating markets, easy money, lax oversight over Wall St banks, and his reputation.  Greenspan appeared to have fallen asleep at the wheel at a time of explosive growth in the derivatives industry, which were front and center, along with housing and moral hazard, as key causes of the 2008 financial crisis.

What then hath the maestro wrought?  His legacy is certainly worth knowing.

The Federal Reserve has not only become the banker/lender of last resort but today, it’s also the sugar daddy of last resort.  Thanks to the FED put, the consolidation of too big to fail Wall St banks, and America’s dependence upon the financialized economy (versus a real economy), the expectation is that the FED will wade into any crisis and save the day by printing money, slash rates, expand the balance sheet, monetize debt, and flood markets with a tsunami of cash. 

As a result of the FED put and an establishment playbook of papering over any crisis with a wall of money, placing any crisis in the rearview mirror as quickly possible, there’s never any assessment of blame, responsibility, accountability.  There is never any debate or discussion about America’s dependence upon Wall St greed, paper shuffling, algos, AI and program trading, arcane and hazardous financial products (that offer no intrinsic value to society), and derivative products.  Essentially a misallocation of public resources.  Nearly all of Wall St today is focused on gaming the system for short term gain, that is to say, a gambling den, a catastrophically leveraged & rigged casino.  Financial news media seemingly looks to shoehorn a narrative into justifying and rationalizing price movements and trajectory (fundamentals and the reality that the market is moved by broad economic trends that are harmful to labour, the public, and taxpayer are conveniently omitted or receive short discussion if any).  It’s assumed that this bailout cycle -- and taxpayer funded insurance program for banks, billionaires, and Wall St firms -- will continue indefinitely (some have argued that crashes, like SVB, are so lucrative that they are pre-planned and orchestrated).  Post crash, congressional involvement is diminished, seemingly no debate required.  Greenspan did this: privatized profits and socialized bailouts and losses.

With all this easy money sloshing around -- thanks to Greenspan, the FED, and fractional reserve banking -- the value of the dollar has shrank, asset values of the rich have skyrocketed.  To the best of my knowledge, no politician has ever run on easy money policies, no FED chair has ever been elected by the public on these policies, nor has the public ever voted on these policies.  This in turn has minted the world’s largest number of billionaires.  Billionaires flush with assets and cash behave with impunity, by purchasing judges and politicians to ensure that their privilege, policies, and protections are preserved (to the detriment and at the expense of the American people). 

Mr. Greenspan and his successors have wrought, via easy money and the FED put, explosive growth in the national debt: $2.35 trillion in ’87 when Greenspan started; $8.5 trillion in ’06 at the time of Greenspan’s retirement, Great Recession Eve; and today it’s $40 trillion.  The maestro did that.  Essentially enabling presidents and congress to spend like drunken sailors on shore leave. Trump, alone, is said to be responsible for approximately 20 to 25% of the national debt, enabled by successive FED chairs following Greenspan’s easy money template. The explosive growth in private equity and venture capital… that wage war against citizens, customers, families, labour, and the public daily… owes their entire business model to central bank easy money policies and cheap debt. The low yield or interest environment serves PE’s leveraged buyouts, while pushing institutional investors, in search of yield and return, into investing in their repugnant PE industry (private equity, of course, forever fixated on short term gain, the quick kill, instead of long-term success, sustainability, and sanity). 

Then there’s the matter of all that blood, colonialism, empire, genocide, Israel, and wars the FED’s monetary policies facilitate and in conjunction with the Treasury fund.  Who pays for all that?  The U.S. taxpayer is the correct answer, but the FED enables it all by effectively working with the Treasury, and via easy money finances the U.S. empire.  Essentially, FED easy money keeps the Imperial War Machine well lubricated, and our warmonger outpost in the Middle East, Israel and King Netanyahu, happy.

That’s some pretty grim stuff that rolls right up to the maestro, who set the bar.  Notice, the net effect of Greenspan’s easy money policies, often take the American public, taxpayer, and voter right out of the equation, discussion, decision making, and debate.  Which is precisely the way the billionaires, bankers, Wall St, and political class … aka the beneficiaries of easy money… like it.  While leaving the American public on the hook for debt, deficits, and a devalued US dollar... an American public with decades of austerity, a depreciated currency, inflation, and significantly diminished futures to look forward to.  Unless they revolt, as was done at the nation's founding?  Isn’t that convenient.

And perhaps the greatest irony of all… all this easy money, financialization, greed, oligarchy, and M&A… ultra-accommodative monetary policy, monopoly formation, and private equity… all of it is highly detrimental to the FED’s dual mandate.  A consolidated real economy, facilitated by Mr. Greenspan’s policies, means monopoly, monopsony, and totalitarian power over prices, especially the essentials, and extraordinary control over employment and wages.  So that if we are looking for price stability, we’ll find none of that today, thanks to easy money.  If we are looking for a functioning economy that produces well-paying jobs with a living wage, we’ll find none of that today (for 70 to 75% of individuals, at least), thanks to easy money.

 

 

 

The justification for Wall St, once upon a time, the tail and not the dog, was its ability to generate pools of capital for business, innovation, R&D and fund the government and programs.  But increasingly, this justification has been overshadowed by the fact that the rigged financial markets have become both the ends and the means (a principle means and the least resistant path of wealth extraction), a vehicle to launder exorbitant privilege and redistribute that ever-depreciating privilege to a very few individuals and institutions. 

Consider the risks involved in maintaining Mr. Greenspan’s extraordinarily leveraged financialized economy… AI automated trading, easy money benefiting predominately oligarchs, moral hazard, explosive growth in the money supply & dollar devaluation, soaring national debt, free reinsurance courtesy of the US taxpayer for Wall St, and the Greenspan put…  such as a derivatives market with 1.25 quadrillion dollars in notional value.  Is it worth it?  Is a system that is beneficial to so few… beneficial to some of the nastiest people on the planet, billionaires… worth it?  Finally, consider the hagiography surrounding Mr. Greenspan’s career, that has flooded the MSM and financial press.  Is it accurate?

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2026

Zero Degrees of Separation: Alberta & Nigeria

Zero Degrees of Separation: Alberta & Nigeria 

 

In a post on the social media platform he owns, Elon Musk recently lamented, “Whoever said ‘money can’t buy happiness’ really knew what they are talking about.”

-             Elon Musk Is World’s First Trillionaire After SpaceX IPO, Bloomberg

 

By Gregg Wall (6-13-2026)

Just as white America has more in common with wage slavery and indentured servitude in Africa today, than U.S. domiciled billionaires, Canada has far more in common with Nigeria, in terms of resource exploitation and environmental degradation, than it does the United States (which has largely become a holding company for extreme wealth).  That is to say, our leaders have failed the public, while serving and enriching a predatory few. 

I’m not sure exactly when Nigeria came to mind, except that I’ve been focused on Alberta separation, the glorification of oil & gas by separatist traitors, and the cold hard reality that the wealth of Alberta & Nigerian oil and gas has been transferred to the United States & the West (while Canadians and Nigerians are left holding the bag on known costs, externalities, environmental degradation, and massive subsidies).  Some academics call this the “resource curse.”  Nigeria, of course, is often the primary producer of oil and gas in Africa… Its gas reserves are enormous.  Starting there, the parallels with Alberta begin to snowball.  Both Nigeria and Alberta’s governments own their resources but have leased those resources out to the private sector, U.S. and multinational Oil & Gas majors… and the all too familiar pattern plays out.  The oil majors syphon off the lion’s share of the profits, the governments collect a pittance in royalties and taxation (relative to Norway), slash their respective labour costs, trash the environment, and then flee their obligations and responsibilities, after selling off their leases to smaller bit and regional players (in Alberta we see this with abandoned wells and 1.5 trillion liters of tailings).  Corrupt Alberta and Nigerian governments fail to collect adequate bonds, collateral, and security for clean-up efforts. 

There are zero degrees of separation between Alberta and Nigeria.

Per my recent write up, Alberta separatist leaders (seppies) push energy as the provincial savior, push a product that is drowning Alberta in cleanup costs and hundreds of billions in liabilities.  The separatist leaders have ties to the Americans and have conveniently adopted the talking points of oil industry CEOs.  It’s all a pack of lies.  What seppies conveniently leave out: 

Alberta O&G, via leases & licenses, is essentially American owned;

US O&G is laying off the Alberta workforce; 

US O&G is sending massive profits to America; 

US O&G is leaving Canada with hundreds and billions in liabilities; 

US O&G treats Alberta like Nigeria… exploits and dumps contaminated air, water, and land on Canada… leaving Alberta far, far poorer than ignorant seppies will admit or acknowledge; 

The industry is lethal and murders one in five;

The O&G industry, in part, is responsible for endless middle east wars, as wars taking supplies offline is a sure-fire way to increase prices and profits. 

 

  Alberta’s high priestess of failure?  

So, the rational response?   Why can’t governments, Alberta and Nigeria, work together with the private sector oil utilities to produce oil and gas responsibly, pay for cleanup, healthcare costs for the citizen injured by cancer alleys and contaminated air, land, and water, damages to the environment, burning towns and cities like Jasper, Alberta and Los Angeles???   Or the Niger Delta which has been destroyed by oil & gas? 

Answer: If the oil and gas majors were properly assessed for their damages… bodily injury, economic damages, misallocation of taxpayer funded subsidies, and property damages in real time… gas & derivative products prices would soar.  Renewable energy, the competitor, is increasingly producing both free and reliable energy.  Oil and gas simply cannot compete.  Here lies an O&G industry on its death bed that is entirely dependent upon a lie, systemic government corruption, and politicians that refuse to assess this industry for its damages, past, current, and future.  Because the politicians are simply corrupt.  Alberta seppies believe they pay extraordinary taxes to the Feds… but they pay at the same federal tax rate as every other province.  (Alberta seppies feel like they are being shortchanged on so-called equalization payments/wealth-sharing arrangements.  But when we consider that both Alberta and Canada are accruing hundreds of billions in liabilities on behalf of the private sector, American owned oil and gas utilities, and Alberta will need a bailout from the Canadian federal government when the bill comes due… the equalization/wealth-sharing myth simply evaporates… becomes an even greater fairy tale.)

The bottom line:  The O&G industry receives trillions in subsidies and cover for wars & environmental violence… paid for by the Canadian, Nigerian, and Western taxpayer (and less directly by the accumulation of nation-state debts to prop up this repugnant and disgusting industry).  This industry is only viable by perpetuation of a lie and a swindle:  Privatized profits and socialized corruption, externalities, liabilities, and subsidies. Oil royalty and oligarchs grow richer, while the Canadian, Nigerian, and Western taxpayer gets nailed to a cross made of debt, gas, oil, and tar.

Meanwhile, Norway did it correctly. Norway placed its citizens first. Norway owns its oil and gas fields and uses state owned production companies to harvest the oil and gas.  Profits and taxes accrue to a sovereign wealth fund, so that Norway holds $2 trillion in assets for the people, while Alberta and Nigeria hold $32 billion and $3.4 billion, respectively.  The difference, Norway used the state and integrity to accumulate assets on behalf of its citizens… while corrupt Alberta and Nigerian governments allowed the private sector to loot natural resources on behalf of shareholders and oligarchs, exacerbating boom & bust cycles.  Canada and Nigeria are swimming in natural resources, rely heavily on the private sector for extraction, and yet, both countries have poverty problems, food insecurity, and failed neoliberal economic policies… the U.S. is facing similar problems.  Reliance on greed-first policies, growth, market based solutions, and shareholders before all have trashed all three economies.  For Norway’s citizens, on the other hand, resources are extracted by the state, wealth is extracted for The People, and poverty is virtually nonexistent (at 10%).   Essentially, the private sector FAILS the 99% in Alberta, Nigeria, and the U.S., while a well-managed Norway government and sovereign wealth fund WINS… in a pattern that plays out throughout the world. 

The Norway economic model, indisputably, is a world leader. The United States and rabid greed should be ignored at all costs.  It’s time to give billionaires the boot and give state intervention, management, planning… the Norway model… first priority.

Presently, there are zero degrees of separation for humanity, from Alberta to Nigeria and back again, to the United States.  Humanity and labour are being massively exploited, and given the shaft, by a global oligarchy.

Copyright JM Hamilton Publishing 2026