There’s a shockingly honest and accurate article about Canada’s deteriorating trade performance in today’s Globe and Mail by Barrie McKenna. It notes that Canada’s trade balance improved dramatically in November (almost completely closing October’s $1.5 billion). However, it cited some Bay Street economists lamenting that this was for the “wrong reasons”: namely, a sharp slowdown in Canadian spending and hence […]
Read moreTrade Minister Peter van Loan goes after Maude Barlow with a letter in yesterday’s Globe and Mail, responding to her fine recent op-ed on the Canada-EU free trade talks. Among other cheap shots, van Loan once again cited as “proof” the findings of a computable general equilibrium model that was commissioned by the EU and the Canadian government to support […]
Read moreCanada’s recovery from the 2008-09 recession ground to a painful halt during the second half of 2010. The economy created no net new jobs from the summer onward, economic growth slowed to a crawl, and the nation’s current account deficit reached a record size. And all of that was while federal-provincial stimulus efforts (said to provide a boost equivalent to […]
Read moreLike most dailies, the Globe and Mail produces a honking big weekly supplement on cars; theirs is called Globe Drive, and comes out every Friday. One feature of the section is a mildly amusing column called “My Wheels,” each edition of which features some minor Canadian celebrity discussing their personal choice of vehicle. I recently pitched an idea to the […]
Read moreFriday’s labour force survey numbers from Statistics Canada were another nail in the coffin of Canada’s fleeting, fragile economic “recovery.” On first glance, the data seemed to tell a good story: the official unemployment rate tumbled from 7.9% to 7.6% in November. Immediately, that seemed strange — given that 0nly 15,000 jobs were created for the month. Worse yet, full-time […]
Read moreTo provide a little context for our current national debate on foreign investment, I did a little digging recently in the FDI data. Some of my findings surprised me. Yes, Canada exports slightly more FDI capital than we import (that is, the net investment position in FDI is slightly positive). But most of what we export is in banking; most […]
Read moreGM’s $22 billion IPO got off to a roaring start last week. It’s ironic, needless to say, that it was underwritten by some of the same financiers (JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, and Bank of America) who brought us the global financial crisis — the same crisis that pushed GM over the edge into bankruptcy protection! That just goes to […]
Read moreHere’s an amusing epilogue to my recent CCPA report on the possible economic and employment impacts of a free trade agreement between Canada and the EU. (Here is the report; here is my blog on it.) The day after the report came out, reporters asked Trade Minister Peter Van Loan to comment on its predictions that Canadian industries (mostly in […]
Read moreThe Canadian and EU governments are working toward a free trade agreement that would comprehensively liberalize trade in goods and services, government procurement, foreign investment, and other important economic interactions between the two parties. Canada enters these negotiations with a notable disadvantage in terms of both quantitative trade flows, and the qualitative composition of trade. Canada currently incurs large bilateral […]
Read moreMy Globe and Mail column today looks at the issue of trade imbalances in global trade. Countries like Germany have stimulated their own recoveires (for now) by deliberately targeting large trade surpluses; this strategy has also been followed for years by China, Japan, Korea, and others enamoured with export-led growth (which is a totally different animal, keep in mind, from […]
Read moreMichael Hlinka is the notoriously libertarian daily economics reporter on CBC Metro Morning (the flagship morning radio show in Toronto). Our paths have crossed before; see my previous commentary: http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2009/07/11/another-economics-journalism-is-possible/ Michael’s segment on September 1 (in conversation with host Matt Galloway) focused on the Statistics Canada GDP release. It was a sensible and largely uncontroversial discussion, with Michael taking a […]
Read moreYesterday’s GDP numbers were worse than they seemed. And they highlighted a curious feature of modern capitalism. Nowadays, non-financial businesses have become major net lenders to the rest of the economy. Instead of borrowing money (in various forms: debt, equity, etc.) from other sectors to finance real investment, non-financial businesses are not even reinvesting their own cash flow. The surplus […]
Read moreHere’s a fascinating finding from an NBER study: “The Economic Crisis and Medical Care Usage,” by Annamaria Lusardi, Daniel Schneider, and Peter Tufano (NBER study #15843). They undertook a broad public survey across 5 countries (the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, and France) on the economic and social impacts of the recession. The survey covered over 6000 individuals (over 2000 in […]
Read more           Canada’s federal government made an important announcement this week.  It was kept deliberately quiet: with a news release issued at 4:45 pm on a calm Tuesday in the middle of the late-summer news “dead zone.” But it should set alarm bells ringing for anyone concerned with the anti-democratic direction of global trade law.
Read moreProf. Myron Gordon was an economist, a long-time member of faculty at the Rotman School of business at the U of T, and a founding member of the Progressive Economics Forum. Sadly he passed away in Toronto on July 5 of this year. My Gordon was very influential with me, and I know with many other independent-minded economists in Canada.  In 1998 […]
Read moreOne of the wonderful things about being away from the usual grind for a few months, is that I get to engage in this unusual activity called picking up a book and actually reading it. What a concept! It doesn’t happen much in the normal day-to-day life of CAW economist, engaged citizen, and co-parent of two lovelies. But it does […]
Read moreFrom the “fox guarding the henhouse” category comes news that the Bank of Canada has appointed Tim Hodgson, CEO of Goldman Sachs’ Canadian subsidiary, to be a special advisor for the next 18 months on financial regulatory reform. Hodgson worked with Governor Mark Carney when the latter was also at Goldman Sachs. (Don’t forget, Carney himself spent 13 years at […]
Read moreBill Watson might just be my very favourite right-wing economist. (He might disagree with that moniker. Or he might not. He probably thinks he’s just being “rational.”) Prof at McGill, punchy commentator for the National Post, and always game for a fair debate (unlike most of his ilk who just try to ignore us in hopes we’ll go away and stop […]
Read moreHow fascinating, and inspiring, to see China’s workers continuing to build their fightback against the low pay and grueling working conditions that have unfortunately been part and parcel of China’s recent development. And how appropriate that it was a fight against a global auto giant, Honda, that finally put the global spotlight on this struggle. Finally, how ironic that Honda […]
Read moreThe title for this post borrows from an article by Robert Rowthorn (my old Cambridge professor) and Terry Ward in the 1979 Cambridge Journal of Economics, titled “How to run a company and run down an economy.” It’s still a classic on the difference between private cost-benefit accounting and social cost-benefit accounting (showing how the logic of coal-mine closures had […]
Read moreMy good friend and CAW brother Paul Pugh (President of CAW Local 1075 in Thunder Bay) has brought to my attention recent economic and political developments in Uruguay, the little nation of 4 million people squashed between Argentina and Brazil. Paul has family connections to Uruguay and follows developments there closely. While not as well-covered in the media as developments […]
Read moreProgressive economists everywhere should say a thank you this week to Wynne Godley, who passed away May 13. He started out his career as an economist working for the U.K. Treasury, then got to know Nicholas Kaldor and moved over to Cambridge to help establish the Department of Applied Economics there (from which he retied in 1993). His more recent work […]
Read moreLast Friday I had the honour of sharing the podium (and a good supper afterward) with Steve Keen, the awesome Australian economist who was recently named the winner of the “Revere Award” for most accurately forewarning of the global financial crisis. In fact, that award was announced the same day we spoke together to the Politics in the Pub speaker’s […]
Read moreLast week’s announcement by GM that is has fully repaid the loans it received from the U.S., Canadian, and Ontario governments (years ahead of schedule, and with interest) was greeted in most circles as another positive sign of the auto industry’s modest recovery. Since the dark days of last June (when Chrysler was shut down entirely), the Canadian auto assembly […]
Read moreThe Steelworkers are carrying on their historic and very brave battle with Vale-Inco up in Sudbury. Last week’s huge solidarity rally was a sign that the rest of the labour movement is finally waking up to the threat that this battle poses to all of us. Imagine a profitable global company like Vale, buying up a precious Canadian resource at […]
Read more           We all know there’s an economic recovery out there, right? Because it said so, in the newspapers.            Problem is, no-one I know has actually seen the recovery. (I don’t have any friends who are bank executives. So all those multi-billion dollar bonuses being paid out by government-subsidized, government-protected banks? No-one I know got any of it.)            In […]
Read moreI recently had the joy of spending a couple of weeks in Kerala, the little socialist state at the bottom tip of India. Apart from exquisite food, friendly people, beautiful jungles, and welcoming climate, Kerala’s greatest asset of course is its astonishing record in producing a literate, healthy, politically engaged society — all on the strength of a very modest […]
Read more           A year ago, as part of his 2009 crisis budget, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty created a Task Force on Financial Literacy. The goal was to equip Canadians with more knowledge to traverse the minefields of high finance. This week, just in time for Flaherty’s next budget, the Task Force released its initial “consultation” report.            On one level, this […]
Read moreStatsitics Canada has released some interesting new obscure research on what constitutes a “purchasing power parity” exchange rate for Canada. It was summarized in an article in the December Canadian Economic Observer, and is explained more fully in an on-line technical paper by John Baldwin and Ryan Macdonald. First off, let me remind everyone that the international empirical evidence is […]
Read moreI guess I must be a Rodney Dangerfield economist. Because I just don’t get no respect — at least not in some quarters. It all started with an interesting CBC on-line column from the erstwhile Don Newman: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/07/f-vp-newman.html He was taking Stephen Harper to task for proroguing Parliament. Among other aguments, he noted that Canada’s economy had serious issues that […]
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