Monthly Archives: February 2011
“But where will the demand come from?” In praise of older Keynesians
It gets asked in every recession. Recovery requires an increase in demand. "But where will the demand come from?" When I was young and foolish I would answer "housing". Which was actually a fairly good guess in the past. But when I got older and more devious I would refuse to answer. "If an armchair […]
“I’m a corporation and so’s my wife.”
"Women are persons in matters of pains and penalties, but are not persons in matters of rights and privileges." Traditional British common law held that women and men were inherently unequal. Today, the equality of men and women is enshrined in the Canadian constitution, and we face a different legal challenge: Corporations are persons in […]
The Waiting Until We Can Afford It Argument – Part II
This more of an argument you hear for a one-time expense such as building new schools or buying new military aircraft, that goes something along the lines of: "We already have a deficit, so this policy will just increase the deficit and we'll pay even more in interest. But if we wait until we have […]
CIT Cuts: The Waiting Until We Can Afford It Argument
One common argument against a CIT (corporate income tax) cut is along the lines of "we've already got a deficit and a CIT cut will just make the deficit worse. Why don't we wait until we've got a surplus before we even consider cutting rates? Let's wait for the economy to get better, revenues to […]
A preliminary estimate for Canadian 2010Q4 GDP growth
Statistics Canada released their estimates for November GDP gowth on Monday, and it was relatively good news: an increase of 4.4% at annual rates. But we shouldn't get to excited. According to the small backcasting (no, I did not make that word up) model I've been using for the past few years, the 2010Q4 number […]
A new Canadian economics blog: Northern Economist
The string of good Canadian econoblog news continues. Lakehead University's Livio Di Matteo has a blog: Northern Economist. I've only become recently aware of it, but a brief skim is enough to tell me (and you) that this is yet another high-quality addition to the still-too-small Canadian econoblogosphere. I'm off to subscribe to his feed […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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