An enduring mystery of the Canadian economy is trying to figure out why the CAD-USD exchange rate is doing whatever it happens to be doing at any given moment. Notwithstanding popular opinion – an opinion that is all-too-often reinforced by commentators who should know better – the CAD-USD exchange rate isn’t like a stock price, […]

As I noted earlier, Canada is the only G7 country that is running current account and government balance surpluses these days. The story behind the government surplus is of course well-known, and will probably be the subject of another post. But what about that current account surplus? A cursory look at the data suggests a […]

Last week’s Economist had a nice survey on the odd patterns we’ve seen in the international flows of savings and capital over the past few years. Ordinarily, we’d expect to see savings and investment flow from rich countries (where capital is relatively abundant) to poor countries (where capital is relatively scarce). But that’s not what’s […]