The Budget contains no big surprises but is still a big disappointment. Despite the fact that unemployment is and will remain very high, economic stimulus measures effectively end after this year. A few very small new investments in jobs and skills will be made, but they do not amount to even the beginnings of a strategy to build a new […]
Read more(I wrote the following to circulate to some European colleagues.) Apparently former Canadian Finance Minister and Prime Minister Paul Martin is being tapped by the Europeans for advice on fiscal matters. “Former prime minister Paul Martin, finance minister in the 1990s when Canada’s dangerously high federal deficit was tackled and then eliminated, said Thursday he’s been engaged in “informal” discussions […]
Read moreIn an important series of columns in the Financial Times, economics editor Martin Wolf has been making the argument that – to avoid a relapse into recession – governments must run deficits so long as the private sector is running large surpluses of savings over spending. “Jumps in fiscal deficits are the mirror image of retrenchment by battered private sectors. […]
Read moreGreece is being played in the media as a morality play in which a profligate government is brought to account by the bond market and forced to submit to stern – but justified – austerity measures. While Greek economic governance before the socialists recently returned to power was not without huge flaws, this account misses out on some key fronts. […]
Read moreFollowing are my speaking notes for a presentation I was asked to make to labour ministers last week. I found myself much much more gloomy than my fellow panelists who think that we shall soon be experiencing labour and skills shortages. I hope they are right – but fear that this theme is being developed to deflect the need for […]
Read moreHere is the link to a very good paper by Pierre Habbard of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD. http://www.tuac.org/en/public/e-docs/00/00/06/7C/document_doc.phtml The IMF appears to be consulting quite widely and with some sympathy to proponents of an FTT , so we may yet get a positive report to the G20, opening up a realistic possibility of agreement if Obama […]
Read moreSome puzzling comments in today’s Globe story casting cold water on the notion that there is a housing bubble. The story makes the classic anti bubble argument that national averages conceal a lot of local variation, reflecting local conditions. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/economy/the-home-price-puzzle/article1475073/ “Toronto-Dominion Bank economist Pascal Gauthier says the diverse nature of Canada’s real estate market means a U.S.-style bubble is not […]
Read moreIt is striking that, even while moved to concern and some action, the Bank of Canada and the Minister of Finance are still desperately afraid to admit that Canada is experiencing a housing bubble. One can go on and on about how difficult it is to spot a bubble. But, as Dean Baker has often argued with reference to the […]
Read moreI contribute occasionally to a web based publication, The Mark. Today they are running my piece on the continuing crisis in the job market, and the need for governments to respond. http://themarknews.com/articles/948-still-in-recession The first few paras follow: “While the situation is not quite as daunting as in the U.S., Canada’s job market is still mired in deep recession. Chances are […]
Read moreWho would have thunk it. Seems like there is a pretty radical rethink of monetary policy verities going on at the IMF of all places. The exchange rate rethink seems especially relevant to Canadian monetary policy and they will be aghast at the Bank of Canada on the case for higher inflation targets. From today’s FT http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/f9f4067e-1758-11df-87f6-00144feab49a.html IMF floats plan […]
Read moreAn interesting column, arguing that the very limited rise in unemployment in the Great Recession in Australia owes a lot to a well-constructed stimulus program of the Labour government, based on higher transfers to lower income households plus short and medium term infrastructure investment. http://column.global-labour-university.org/2009/11/riding-your-luck-and-adopting-right.html
Read moreI highly recommend a very convincing argument for the FTT by Stephan Schulmeister of the Austrian Institute for Economic Research. His paper  effectively counters the “rational markets” view that high volumes of speculative trading move stock, currency and commodity prices towards equilibrium values based on fundamentals. Instead, such trading moves prices away from fundamentals for extended periods, with significant result […]
Read moreThe survey of private sector economists released by the Department of Finance today offers up a pretty bleak forecast that the national unemployment rate will average 8.5% in 2010, up a bit from the 8.3% average in 2009 and up a bit from 8.4% last month (December, 2009) . http://www.fin.gc.ca/n10/data/2010-08_1e.pdf That forecast strikes me as pretty much bang on or […]
Read moreOxfam are seeking endorsements of this letter by professional economists. If you want to sign on, please notify Sophie Freeman: SFreeman@Oxfam.org.uk Dear G20 As economists from across the world, we call on you to implement a financial transaction tax (FTT). This tax is an idea that has come of age. The financial crisis has shown us the dangers of unregulated […]
Read moreThe Global Labour University are publishing Global Labour Columns on the general theme of how labour should be responding to the crisis. The most recent is by yours truly, re working some pieces previously posted to this blog. The other columns posted are well worth a look. http://column.global-labour-university.org/
Read moreThe content in the EI report by myself and Sylvain Schetagne which was released by the CCPA yesterday won’t be new to readers of this blog – an updating of trends in unemployment and EI use to show that tens of thousands of workers who lost their jobs early in the Great Recession are and will soon be exhausting benefits […]
Read moreSTEERING COMMITTEE OF PROVINCIAL/TERRITORIAL MINISTERS ON PENSION COVERAGE AND RETIREMENT INCOME ADEQUACY OPTIONS FOR INCREASING PENSION COVERAGE AMONG PRIVATE SECTOR WORKERS IN CANADA EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This paper released by BC Finance Minister Colin Hansen for the provincial/territorial ministers indicates much more fundamental problems with our pension system than those identified in the Mintz Report and gives serious consideration to the […]
Read moreOn the eve of the Whitehorse meeting of Finance Ministers in December, the Howe released a report co-authored by Bill Robson which charged that the federal government’s pension plan liabilities on behalf of its own employees are greatly under-stated – to the tune of $58 billion. This sum should, he argued, be added to the federal public debt. http://www.cdhowe.org/pdf/backgrounder_122.pdf As […]
Read moreThe case for a Financial Transactions Tax or FTT has crept in from the margins remarkably quickly. One year ago, the proposal for an internationally co-ordinated “Tobin Tax†on foreign exchange transactions was a dim memory from the early part of the decade. Today, the idea of broadening such a tax to include a far wider range of transactions such […]
Read moreThe Global Labour University are publishing an interesting series of Global Labour Columns. The most recent by Patrick Belser – author of the ILO Global Wage Report – looks at the impact of the Great Recession on wages. http://column.global-labour-university.org/2010/01/why-we-should-care-about-wages.html “Focusing on unemployment rates alone understates the true extent of the deterioration of employment and conditions of work in labour markets. […]
Read moreThere is an interesting piece on productivity in today’s Daily looking at the changing relationship between output change and employment change in recessions, over time and as between Canada and the US. One part of the story is that employers used to hoard labour during recessions, but are now inclined to cut jobs and hours quickly in response to a […]
Read moreCSPI have just published the second edition of my book, Work and Labour in Canada: Critical Issues. While this is written mainly as a text for university level courses, others may find it useful as a resource on a wide range of labour market issues and trends, including the role of unions. The book can be ordered from CSPI or […]
Read moreThis IMF staff paper – the lead author is the chief economist, Olivier Blanchard -is well worth reading. Makes a rather urgent call for expansion of internal consumption demand in China and currency realignments if we are to work our way out of the crisis. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/spn/2009/spn0929.pdf
Read moreFurther to my earlier post on the Mintz report on pensions http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/12/20/the-mintz-report-and-the-pensions-debate/ Statistics Canada have released the major study on income replacement rates in retirement by Yuri Ostrovsky and Grant Schellenberg which was cited at some length by Mintz. http://cansim2.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-win/cnsmcgi.pgm?Lang=E&AS_Abst=11F0019M2009321&ResultTemplate=/Stu-Etu/Anal_RchAbst The study looks at the incomes of retirees in their early 70s in 2006 in relation to their earnings some […]
Read moreThere is more evidence in today’s release of EI data that the decline in the number of EI beneficiaries is being driven by exhaustion of benefits rather than by a fall in unemployment. Between September and October, the number of unemployed (seasonally adjusted) rose by 37,700 but the number of regular EI beneficaries (also seasonally adjusted) fell by 4,040. Between […]
Read moreI blogged back in August to express some concern about the implications of Jack Mintz’s appointment as research director for the federal and provincial finance minister’s review of the Canadian pension system. http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/08/06/jack-mintz-research-and-pensions/#comment-20646 .  Suffice to say now that the general thrust of his report, tabled this week, http://www.fin.gc.ca/activty/pubs/pension/riar-narr-eng.asp , did not come as a great surprise to me. (The […]
Read moreAs the communique from the Pittsburgh G20 put it, “it worked.” Unprecedented macro-economic stimulus in the form of ultra low interest rates and large government deficits pulled the global economy back from the abyss. Canada has now joined most countries in exiting the recession, at least very tentatively. But what is next? The official line from the Canadian government, the […]
Read moreThe Twelve Days of Christmas 2009 by British Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy (Published in Radio Times) http://www.radiotimes.com/content/features/carol-ann-duffy-the-twelve-days-of-christmas/ ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS, a buzzard on a branch. In Afghanistan, no partridge, pear tree; but my true love sent to me a card from home. I sat alone, crouched in yellow dust, and traced the grins of my kids […]
Read moreThe following is an extract from the CLC publication “Recession Watch” available at http://www.canadianlabour.ca/sites/default/files/Recession-Watch-03-Fall-2009-EN.html Before the recession, more than one in four (27.9%) of claimants exhausted their benefits (29.9% of women and 26.5% of men) and more than one in three (34.3%) older workers exhausted their benefits. Currently, claimants are eligible for between 19 weeks and 50 weeks of benefits […]
Read moreThe Globe seems rather agitated about the plight of male university students . On top of a front page story by Elizabeth Church yesterday pointing out the now rather well known fact that female undergraduate enrollment now outstrips male enrollment by a margin of 58% to 42%, they editorialize today as follows: “Indira Samarasekera, the president of the University of […]
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