Category The 2008-9 recession
Probably not the best stimulus proposal I’ve seen so far
The Quebec government released an economic statement thingy (pdf) today, announcing six measures to counter the recession. Here is number five: [W]e are acting on our commitment to raise the minimum wage to protect thepurchasing power of low-wage workers. The minimum wage will be raised by 50cents an hour next May 1, bringing it to […]
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 […]
Why are forecasters predicting a mild recession for Canada?
Shock Minus Control notes that Canadian forecasters in both the public and private sector are predicting a short, mild recession and he provides a good graph that puts these forecasts in historical perspective. In addition, IMF and OECD forecasts for Canada are more optimistic than for most of the other developed countries. But how and why can […]
October may have been the peak. Now what?
An ugly LFS report: employment fell by 71,000 – the sort of report we haven't seen since the last time we were in recession. And no commodities boom is going to come save us this time. It's time to do something - but not just anything. The cutbacks in the Harper government's economic update were clearly wrong-headed, […]
Just who is supposed to build the new infrastructure?
It would appear that the issue of whether or not the federal government should be increasing expenditures on infrastructure could determine who will form the government in the next few weeks. But just who is supposed to build this new infrastructure? As I noted earlier, unemployment in the construction sector is at an all-time low. […]
On the timing, size and form of an eventual fiscal stimulus
The federal government released its economic update yesterday. Some things were silly: the nickel-and-dime budget cuts are at best pointless, and are much more likely to be counter-productive. One of the benefits of getting public finances under control was supposed to be that we wouldn't have to play these games. And the proposal to cut […]
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
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