Atlantica is the brain child of Brian Lee Crowley of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, and current senior advisor in the federal Department of Finance. I had thought that this was a case for some sort of deep integration between the Canadian Atlantic provinces and the US northeastern states – a case that would be hopelessly undermined by the […]
Read moreThe Vancouver Sun story below should be filed under “we told you so”. The CCPA released a few papers on this very issue by Ross Klein, a Newfoundland-based cruise ship expert. The most recent was sixteen months ago, and focussed specifically on the BC industry. Here is what it said: BC also risks becoming the toilet of the Pacific Northwest, […]
Read moreLarry Elliott, writing in The Guardian’s Comment is Free area, on Thailand’s capital controls and its subsequent capitulation: A financial U-turn Thailand’s use of capital controls was intended to penalise short-term investors – but the market reaction was swift and brutal. December 20, 2006 07:04 PM It’s not often I feel sorry for military regimes, but I must confess to […]
Read moreThis is scary: The Concerns of Comptroller of the Currency About the Excesses in the Mortgage Market Nouriel Roubini | Dec 18, 2006 A colleague in the financial sector pointed to my attention a speech that the Comptroller of the Currency – John Duggan – has recently given where he expressed some serious concerns about the growth of exotic mortgages […]
Read moreFormer Vancouver city councillor Gordon Price coins a new term, the “Katrina moment”, of which Vancouver has had a few this Fall. The latest was a fiece windstorm that passed through early Friday morning. Almost everyone I’ve talked to was awakened around 3:30 am by the howling wind, which approached but just fell short of the all-time wind speed record […]
Read moreGiven some recent discourse on unions in our comments area, I decided to reach back to a fairly comprehensive literature survey on the empirical evidence about unions. The report comes not from the CCPA, CAW or CLC, nor does it come from the ILO, but from the World Bank. It is a rather weighty tome, published in 2002, and can […]
Read moreA recommended article by Paul Krugman on US inequality trends appears in the Rolling Stone Review of Economics, The Great Wealth Transfer.
Read moreEric Reguly on the Accelerated Capital Cost Allowance and Big Oil, from today’s Globe: Oil sands may be federal Tories’ Achilles heel … For the opposition parties, the beauty of the oil sands is that you can point to them. The visuals are appropriately disturbing. You can see the gaping holes in the earth, you can measure the water flows, […]
Read moreA letter to the Prime Minister from Scientists For A Healthy Environment, which doubles as an effective critique of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act: Dear Prime Minister, We are writing to encourage your Government to make significant improvements to Canada ‘s overarching pollution law, the Canadian Environmental Protection Act (CEPA). Canada has a growing pollution problem that is a threat […]
Read moreI balked at purchasing some tickets this weekend because of the rapacious service charges of Ticketmaster. The cost of the tickets was already pretty high, at $38.50, but that just seems to be the going rate these days. Generally, I do not begrudge the escalating cost of live performances because artists make most of their money this way, and the […]
Read moreBC and Alberta signed a new agreement earlier this year to reduce interprovincial barriers to trade. The Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) is due to go into effect in April 2007. Apparently Saskatchewan and Ontario are now considering signing on as well. While it is widely believed in business circles that there exist large barriers to trade within […]
Read more“Canada’s New Government improves protection against hazardous chemicals” says the press release. This item fits in the “ounce of prevention” file, but is also another one for the “opportunistic Harper government” file.On prevention, Canada has been slowly getting its act together with regard to the growing evidence that thousands of untested and unregulated chemicals in the environment are connected with […]
Read moreAnother piece for the “ounce of prevention” file. Poverty, homelessness and crime in BC have gotten bad enough that business leaders are starting to call for action. Thus far, the call has been more cosmetic, as in “get these bums out of my doorway” and “panhandlers are bad for tourism”, but it is a start, I suppose. Now the Premier’s […]
Read moreThe Vancouver Sun’s Harvey Enchin comments on Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s net debt elimination plan, pointing out some nuances in changed accounting practice around the concept of “net debt”: When Finance Minister Jim Flaherty vowed to wipe out Canada’s net debt by 2021, many people heard something else. They thought he had made a pledge to pay off the […]
Read moreThe Globe and Mail is running a series on homelessness in BC (at least, in its BC edition). Mark Hume reiterates the case for supportive housing arrangements to get people off the streets into a place where they can stabilize their lives. It would be highly advisable for senior governments to get back into the housing game, as the market […]
Read moreToday my boss walked in with a notice from his child’s daycare that fees were going up because the Tories have cancelled the Early Learning and Child Care transfer (and the BC government is not picking up any slack in spite of its multi-billion surpluses) – the fee increase eats up his family’s new “child care allowance” cheque and then […]
Read moreStatistics Canada has released results of the latest wealth survey (Survey of Financial Security, or SFS), covering the 2005 year (previous survey was for 1999, and prior to that, 1984). This makes for an interesting comparison, as the 1999 results came at a time when stock markets were bubbling, whereas by 2005 the bubble had shifted to real estate. One […]
Read moreThe World Distribution of Household Wealth, by James B. Davies, Susanna Sandstrom, Anthony Shorrocks, and Edward N. Wolff, was released by the World Institute for Development Economics Research. A Canadian (and a former prof of mine at Western – Go Mustangs!) is the lead author. The full paper is available here. The extended press release doubles as the report’s summary: […]
Read moreThe CCPA released today a study by Osgoode Hall tax professor Neil Brooks and York’s Thaddeus Hwong called The Social Benefits and Economic Costs of Taxation: A Comparison of High and Low-tax Countries. The study compares 50 indicators of social and economic performance. The full study is available here and a condensed summary follows: Tax levels in Canada have always […]
Read moreWas that ever an exciting Liberal leadership convention. It is rare for Canadian politics to get that interesting. Now the fun really begins. Dion would appear to be a good choice. Rae was too smear-able over his time as Ontario Premier; Ignatieff too much a political neophyte and would have had his foot in his mouth during a battle with […]
Read moreFrom the Edmonton Sun: Tory leadership contender Ted Morton says Alberta should cut the amount it contributes to federal transfer payments so it can build more roads and sewers for an influx of workers. Speaking on an Alberta radio talk show (Rutherford-CHQR-CHED), Morton says it makes no sense for Ottawa to pay out employment insurance to keep workers in Atlantic […]
Read morePaul Krugman is in the bears’ camp for 2007 (thanks to Economist’s View for posting NYT Select content): Economic Storm Signals … Before I explain what the bond market is telling us, let’s talk about why the economy may be at a turning point. Between mid-2003 and mid-2006, economic growth in the United States was fueled mainly by a huge […]
Read moreI admit to enjoying weather porn. When a huge rainstorm came to Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, I just had to put on the 6 o’clock news to see the visuals. And then there was the snowstorm (oh, baby). Of course, the thrill of seeing Mother Nature’s wrath is generally better when it is not you – a thought […]
Read moreFrom a New York Times story by Ben Stein: In Class Warfare, Guess Which Class Is Winning NOT long ago, I had the pleasure of a lengthy meeting with one of the smartest men on the planet, Warren E. Buffett, the chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, in his unpretentious offices in Omaha. We talked of many things that, I hope, […]
Read moreThomas Palley and William Greider add two (more critical) obituaries for Milton Friedman. Both make the distinction between Friedman as a professional economist and as a public intellectual: Milton Friedman: The Great Conservative Partisan Milton Friedman died on November 16, 2006 at the age of 94. Without doubt, Friedman was one of the most influential (perhaps the most influential) economists […]
Read moreGeorge Monbiot has a new book out on solutions to global warming. In contrast to the Stern Review, Monbiot’s read of the science is that a much more drastic plan is required if we are to avoid a runaway climate change scenario. His focus is on the UK, but many of his ideas are amenable to Canada as well. The […]
Read moreOnce again the Tories opportunistically use for their own gain what should be an honest update to the public about the country’s finances. OK, the Liberals did that too, but that does not make it right. Along with the Economic and Fiscal Update 2006 comes Advantage Canada, the Tories’ blueprint for prosperity. If the metaphor is tennis, this document makes […]
Read moreJim Webb, Democratic senator-elect from Virginia, writes in the Wall Street Journal: Class Struggle November 15, 2006 The most important-and unfortunately the least debated-issue in politics today is our society’s steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America’s top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the […]
Read moreThere is a crisis of poverty and homelessness in Canada. A poll released by the CCPA yesterday found that Canadians across all regions and demographic categories feel that the gap between rich and poor is growing. There are major challenges that require attention, such as fighting climate change. A poll in the Vancouver Sun the other day found that almost […]
Read moreWhat is the economic cost of a boil water advisory for two million people in Vancouver? (Ironically, it has been raining a lot – but households and businesses cannot easily capture it.) How about the cost of restoring power to a hundred thousand homes after a freak storm? Or the cost of sandbagging properties on the coast to prevent a […]
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