Category Canadian economy
Why can’t Ann get a credit card? A sample of one.
Ann's not her real name, but she's a real person, and she can't get a credit card. Is this normal, or part of the credit tightening reported on the Bank of Canada's latest Senior Loan Officer Survey? That's not a rhetorical question. I don't know the answer, and wondered if any reader did. Details below […]
A GST fiscal stimulus
There are a number of fiscal stimulus proposals out there, but none of them incorporate my suggestion for using the GST to promote an explicitly short-term stimulus and to ensure that the government's ability to pay for future spending is not permanently compromised. For those of you who have not been paying close attention [Cries […]
Maybe the Canadian recession will be short and shallow
As Menzie Chinn reports (I've seen other references, but Econbrowser is a sufficient statistic as far as these matters go), there seems to be some sort of consensus forecast to the effect that the US economy will bottom out about sometime around mid-2009, although there is a certain divergence of opinion about just how deep […]
Gross National Income and house prices and in Canada and in the US
I've been having difficulty finding ways in which we can directly compare the US housing market débâcle with what's going on in Canada, but I've recently been made aware of two new data sources: The Teranet-National Bank Housing Price Index, which appears to be a Canadian equivalent of the celebrated Case-Shiller index: the methodology makes […]
Canadian Economic Forecasts 2009: Make Yours Now!
John Palmer at EclectEcon has made his own forecasts for 2009 . That's an implicit challenge to this blog, and we must not let it go unanswered. So I am now going to follow him down this foolish road, and invite you all to join me.
Always hire the worst
"Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, in a city called Ottawa…." "I thought it was called Windsor?" "No dear, that's another story. Once upon a time, the City of Ottawa needed to hire one person to do a job…." "I thought it was a car factory?"
Deflation may be on its way, but it’s still not here
Coverage of today's CPI release seems to be stressing the fall in the y/y all-items CPI inflation rate (example): The recent fall in prices appears to have been entirely generated by the fall in gasoline prices, which has had the effect of canceling out the spike we saw a few months ago. Here's what's happening […]
Some simple arithmetic of Canadian debt and deficits
Various numbers for projected deficits have been reported recently. This post tries to put those numbers into perspective.
Let’s cut to zero too
OK, the US Federal Reserve has now cut interest rates essentially to zero. I think the Bank of Canada should now do the same.
The Bank of Canada’s Financial System Review
The Bank of Canada published its December 2008 Financial System Review yesterday. I spent a few hours reading it through (something I had never bothered to do in the past). Some observations:
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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