I wear black because I'm comfortable in it. But then in the summertime when it's hot I'm comfortable in light blue - Johnny Cash
On this day in 1986, Columbia Records cut the star from its stable after country music went cold on his traditional style. But the hard-bitten performer had a creative renaissance ahead of him. The Web site www.history.com says that under Rick Rubin, the original producer of the Beastie Boys, Cash developed a “raw, stripped-down sound that proved to be enormously successful with critics, with country traditionalists and with hipster newcomers.” When the album Unchained won a Grammy in 1998, Rubin’s American Recordings placed a full-page ad in Billboard magazine “featuring a 1970 photo of the singer brandishing his middle finger under the line of copy, American Recordings and Johnny Cash would like to acknowledge the Nashville music establishment and country radio for your support.’”
Like Cash, we’ve always found that a measured and mild approach is best. So normally it’s a treat to listen to the soothing pronouncements of central bankers. Bank of England chief Mark Carney, a star in that profession, has joined the Toronto Board of Trade this morning for a discussion of the threat to the financial system if fossil fuel assets turn out to be “stranded.” In unusually blunt language for a central bank chief, he warned last year that investors’ exposure “to these shifts is potentially huge.”
Carney’s discussion this morning is with Minister of Environment and Climate Change Catherine McKenna, who joins Jameson Berkow around 11:15 a.m. ET for a look at the risk and opportunities for Canada as the world works to tackle global warming.
“It’s long past time for Canada to make progress when it comes to fighting climate change,” she said last year.
On the theme of opportunity, at 11:20 a.m. ET we’ll hear from Don Berggren of Toronto-based Berg Chilling Systems. He is selling technology to capture wellhead natural gas produced at oil wells that is often simply burned or “flared,” wasting energy and creating pollution.
There’s plenty of heat in the housing market and the soaring U.S. stock market. At 2 p.m. ET, we’ll be joined by Ed Devlin, head of Canadian portfolio management at giant money manager PIMCO. He was quoted in March as saying he’d been loading up on Canadian banks.
Finally, some cautious souls are wondering just where the market is headed when they look at this year’s biggest tech IPO. Japan’s Line listed in New York yesterday, with the stock making its debut at US$42, up 33 per cent from the offering price. The company raised more than $1-billion.
Line makes emoji-like “stickers” that users can deploy in messages. Its lineup includes “the duck Sally, a sad-faced bear called Brown and Cony the rabbit.”
Nothing frivolous or overvalued here.
Every morning Commodities host Andrew Bell writes a ‘chase note’ to BNN's editorial staff listing the stories and events that will be in the spotlight that day. Have it delivered to your inbox before the trading day begins by heading to www.bnn.ca/subscribe.
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