Category The 2008-9 recession
Boiling Frogs – Slow Recoveries are Deep Recoveries, with Flatter Phillips Curves
Andy Harless' tweet (about the US economy) got me thinking. "There’s a frog-boiling aspect to this economy. The consistent lack of *rapid* improvement throughout the recovery is enabling us to reach levels of employment that might not otherwise have been attainable." It reminds me of my old post "Short Run 'Speed Limits' on recovery". The […]
Tracking the Bank of Canada’s staff projections through the 2008-9 recession
The Bank of Canada has released an archive of the staff projections prepared for the Governing Council for the quarterly Monetary Policy Reports. There's a five year lag, so the most recent set of projections are the ones prepared in 2013Q4. While these projections don't answer the question "What was the Governing Council thinking?", it […]
So What Happens in the Next Recession?
I’m not a macro economist by any stretch of the imagination and yet I cannot help wondering what is going to happen in terms of policy response the next time Canada goes into a downturn. It is not a question of whether there will be another recession, only when. By policy response, I am of […]
Fiscal Balance and Unemployment
As we all know, Canada will be running deficits well into the foreseeable future. Based on the figures from the 2016 Federal Budget, as a percentage of GDP Canada will see its deficit go from a surplus of 0.1% in 2014 to -1.5% in 2016 and then will range from a low of -0.6 percent […]
Resources, Investment and the Current Canadian Slowdown
Real GDP growth in Canada slowed down during 2015 with the drop in the price of oil and the crash in the resource sector. The economic contribution of the main resource producing provinces to Canada’s economic performance is particularly important when it comes to recent capital formation as an economic driver.
Great Recession Versus Great Depression for Canada
With all the doom and gloom with respect to slowing Canadian economic growth and talk of secular stagnation, it is useful to look at a comparison between the last few years in Canada with what transpired during the Great Depression. References are often made that the 2008-09 Recession and its aftermath is a period comparable […]
Comparing Manufacturing Employment Growth: Canada and the USA
According to the employment numbers just released, the United States is doing quite well with the preliminary Bureau of Labour Statistics numbers pointing to the addition of 252,000 jobs in December and an unemployment rate now at 5.6 percent. Meanwhile, Canada exhibited a much weaker performance with Statistics Canada reporting that Canada lost 4,300 jobs […]
Saving Ontario
Here is an entertaining story to ring in the New Year. Apparently, Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne in an interview in her Queen’s Park office says that Ontario is “ready to shield Canada from the economic tsunami caused by declining oil prices and a sinking dollar.” According to the Premier, Ontario’s manufacturing heartland is gearing up […]
How scared of deflation were you, in 2008?
In normal times, like today, or 2004, my subjective probability distribution for the average annual inflation rate over the next 5 years looks something like this: The Bank of Canada tries to keep inflation between 1% and 3%, and targets the 2% midpoint of that range. In any one year, inflation will rarely fall below […]
Ontario Manufacturing: Not Getting Better Anytime Soon
The Ontario economy’s manufacturing sector was particularly hard hit by the 2009 recession. One measure of whether it is rebounding is to see if there is substantial new investment going into Ontario manufacturing in terms of capital expenditures on construction, machinery and equipment. It does not look very good.
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