We was robbed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives during the May 2 Federal election. The truth about the Canadian economy was withheld. Recall, the election eventually revolved around the economy. Other leading economies reeled under…
Continue readingTag: Canadian economy
Impolitical: Canada falls from competitiveness Top 10
Noted from the Globe yesterday: Canada has continued its slide in business competitiveness, falling to 12th place from 10th last year in a World Economic Forum ranking of countries around the globe.The Conference Board of Canada, which prepared the dat…
Continue readingThe irony of greed: The end game for Neoliberalism?
The global economy is in the toilet and the Boomers’ representatives are chanting: “flush, flush, flush.” Me? I am eating cigarettes and wine while admiring the remarkable consistency in the myopia of all of it. In the name of fisca…
Continue readingImpolitical: Today in Flaherty
He will speak: Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is expected to comment on the economy this morning, following the release of the latest data from Statistics Canada. […] Economists widely expect that the Canadian economy stalled in the second quarter and…
Continue readingImpolitical: Canada and its economic wiggle room
A TD report is not optimistic about our room to maneuver should the U.S. go into another recession: “Policy makers in Canada have less wiggle room on the fiscal and monetary fronts and households face larger debt burdens,” Toronto-Dominion Bank dep…
Continue readingImpolitical: Today in Finance Committee
So the big political news out of the Finance Committee meeting today where Jim Flaherty and Mark Carney provided updates on the state of economic affairs for Canada amidst this sea of difficulties seems to have been this: On stimulus“That’s exactly…
Continue readingImpolitical: An economist we could use at Friday’s Finance Committee
Jeffrey Sachs on globalization and present challenges for the US and European economies. His thoughts also ring true for Canada: …I’ve watched dozens of financial crises up close… Neither the US nor Europe has even properly diagnosed the core…
Continue readingDebt Refinancing, the Federal Government and the Provinces
Ok this post is in the form of a naive question. And it goes like this: If the Federal Government can borrow (OK MMTers don’t vide your back-end here, I know they do not have to go to the bond … Continue reading →
Continue readingBigCityLib Strikes Back: Ouch
Crap GDP numbers for May make the Bank of Canada’s 2nd Quarter 1.5 per cent growth figure very difficult to achieve. Crap numbers from the US, and the antics of tea-partiers in Congress, make more crap numbers likely in the near future, sugg…
Continue readingA rotting fruit that does not give vent to its own demand?
Given we seem to be stuck in fairly heady economic times it seems worthwhile to me to put out another post on the subject of employment, labour force growth and unemployment. In this post I am going to revisit the … Continue reading →
Continue readingTowards an adult conversation about Canadian labour markets
Have you ever heard the urban legend about how such and such generation of Canadians are lazier than the past generation? Or the One about how this generation just does not want to work and why we need to make … Continue reading →
Continue readingCanada: persistently 2nd worst in class
During the last election much was made about Canada’s relatively good performance during the last recession. What was conveniently left out of the discussion by all political parties is just how dismal Canada’s macroeconomic performance h…
Continue readingA little perspective on GDP growth or does policy matter?
These are odd times. Not one policy seems to get floated these days which does not include in the tag line that it will be good for economic growth. And it is not just tax cuts for the rich or … Continue reading →
Continue readingUBC economist Milligan throws cake at educated, unemployed youth
I tuned into a rebroadcast of this morning’s the CBC’s the Current while cleaning the kitchen this evening which had an unusually good documentary on the problem of youth unemployment; specifically, the problem of university undergrads in f…
Continue readingImpolitical: "Restraining the welfare state"
This piece last Sunday in the Star, “Restraining the welfare state,” by Stanford Professor Michael Boskin, a former Bush the first adviser, has evoked a fair response in letters to today’s Star: “Welfare argument full of holes.” Boskin’s thesis was tha…
Continue readingThe insanity of Canada’s non-existent domestic labour training regime
Canada does not have nationally coordinated labour training regime. Why does this matter? Just take a look at what is going on in Alberta. There the oil patch is gearing up for record labour shortages and the federal government is … Continue read…
Continue readingThe Day After: Majority, Left-Turn and Sovereignty
The implications of last night’s election are by now a series un-knowable knows and hopeless speculations. I am going to make some comments based on a mix of the two. The Conservative majority is huge. In the context of a … Continue reading …
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