My hot water tank blew out just before Christmas. I had no idea, just went down to the crawlspace to get some wrapping paper and found the floor flooded around the old tank. We’d been expecting this for a while, having never had to change the tank since we moved in seven years earlier. Contemplating my replacement tank I got […]
Read moreIn a column in The Tyee, former BC Socred cabinet minister Will McMartin reviews the ups and downs of BC’s three strikes at balanced budget legislation. Each time this legislation has been repealed, although when the latest BC legislation is “amended” next week it will mark the first time this has been done by the same government and premier that […]
Read moreHousing has been one of the major drivers of the BC economy in recent years. Low interest rates led to rising home prices and a psychology of “must get in before being locked out forever”; leading a housing bubble that had everyone in town swapping jaw dropping stories of bidding wars and outrageous prices paid. The economic driver was not […]
Read moreOver at Worthwhile Canadian Initiative, Stephen has posted a nice graph comparing the average projections from the private sector (as compiled by the Parliamentary Budget Officer) and the Bank of Canada with the paths of the last two recessions. He is poking a hole in a story that there is a gap between the more optimistic Bank view and the […]
Read moreIn his latest rabble.ca column Duncan Cameron takes on a piece of the federal budget that got little play in the media: Budget 2009 and the Bay St. bailout Duncan Cameron Why did the Liberals support the Conservative budget when the analysis is clear: the Finance Minister ignored the vulnerable, punished women, did not provide a serious stimulus to a […]
Read moreThere have been a lot of media stories about freak weather lately, all tacked on with comparators like “worst in 18 years” or several decades or ever. The latest from London is a snowstorm that shut down the city. Here in Vancouver we had a few weeks of heavy snowfall bookending the Christmas period that brought our rainy city to […]
Read moreNow that the federal budget is over, I’ve been girding myself for the Feb 17 BC budget. My concern to date has been bold statements from both parties that they would never run a deficit, and that therefore we were in for a rerun of last Fall’s federal election where all parties kowtowed to the alter of fiscal conservatism. BC’s […]
Read moreFrom Kathleen Lahey, a Law professor at Queen’s University: Budget 2009: Designed to Leave Women Behind – Again The big picture:   Women make up slightly more than half the population of Canada, and are directly responsible for caring for the majority of minor children in the country on a day to day basis. The expectation:   As an ‘economic recovery’ and […]
Read moreFor the “we told you so” file. The BC government has been insisting on P3s (so-called “public-private partnerships” where the private sector builds and operates infrastructure) all over the province. We at the CCPA have consistently argued that this practice is foolish: more complicated, more expensive, and leaving taxpayers holding the bag if anything bad should happen. As a companion […]
Read moreAngry Bear has an excellent synopsis of the state of macroeconomics, and its relationship to the central monetary and fiscal policy debates of today. The post plays on a division of US economists into right-wing “fresh water” economists (epitomized by Chicago) and left-wing “salt water” (Princeton, MIT, Berkeley) that is perhaps a bit simplified (for example the Post-Keynesians at U […]
Read moreThe leakiest budget in Canadian history is now in the public domain, and will not lead to the fall of the Harper government. The budget was preceded by numerous press conferences held by Ministers (with the PM uncharacteristically out of sight), leaving some details to be filled in on budget day, largely tax measures, but in the end it featured […]
Read moreThe existing pot of infrastructure money offered up by the feds in last year’s federal budget has been criticized for being contingent on a P3 model, aka public private partnership, where design, build and subsequent operation of infrastructure was undertaken by the private sector, and leased back to the public sector over the lifetime of the asset. P3s have been […]
Read moreWatching the news last night, there was a lot on the pros and cons of tax cuts versus public spending. As one who has been following the debate on both sides of the border, it is interesting to note the convergence. The Canadian debate, up to the near-fall of the Harper government, was about whether the Canadian economy is actually […]
Read moreWe are repeatedly told in the press that getting out of deficit was oh so difficult, and so we need to proceed cautiously down that road in the 2009 budget. In fact, Paul Martin’s landmark 1995 budget that took aggressive measures (1995/96 fiscal year) turned into a surplus of $3 billion in the 1997/98 fiscal year. So it took exactly […]
Read moreAn amended text from my speaking notes for the press conference releasing the 2009 Alternative Federal Budget. The press conference was covered live on Newsworld and Newsnet. In it we took an opportunity to comment on yesterday’s leak that the deficit will be $34 billion in 2009/10 and $30 billion in 2010/11. The good news is that after a year […]
Read moreA regular reader of Relentlessly Progressive Economics who works at a financial research firm has made a music video about the financial crisis:
Read moreThe PEF’s 2009 Student Essay Contest Is Now Open USE YOUR ECONOMICS FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE! Tired of learning economics that seems more interested in justifying the status quo, than in explaining the real world – and changing it? Then join thousands of economics students around the world: put your economics to work in the cause of social change. PRIZES $1000: […]
Read moreEveryone’s favourite non-issue came up again at last week’s First Minister’s meeting. The outcome of two amendments to the Agreement on Internal Trade was another bit of “progress”, I suppose (see backgrounder below). As usual, the release offers no details on actual trade barriers that are presumed to exist in Canada. With the long-standing margarine case settled as of last […]
Read moreWhy does the Globe oped page save all the good stuff for days when most people are not paying attention? In today’s edition, tax economist Jon Kesselman from SFU says reinforce the automatic stabilizers and focus on social needs: Getting more funds into the hands of individuals who most need support should take priority over cutting taxes. Much of traditional […]
Read moreThe best prof I ever had doing my undergrad at Western was David Laidler. I took a fourth year economic policy course with him, and learned a lot, especially a certain horror known as inflation (John Crow soon embarked on a disastrous war on inflation in the early 1990s that still sends shivers up many of our spines). Interestingly, Laidler […]
Read moreOK, there has been no such call. Yet. But mark my words, this panel will call for tax cuts as the federal government’s fiscal stimulus, and the government will deliver. The Economic Advisory Council is not exactly a representative group. No labour representation, no Aboriginal reps, no one from the social or non-profit sector whatsoever. Thus, the groups most likely […]
Read moreOn CBC news this weekend, they ran a string of stories about how families were cutting back this Christmas due to fears about the economy. There were no poor families interviewed; actually, they were all comfortably upper-middle class (the demographic stereotype of news and most television these days). One family spent $1,000 per kid (times four kids) last year. Perhaps […]
Read moreThere is a lot of concern about there about the state of private pensions and private savings plans (RRSPs and the like). Having lost a quarter to a third of their value in the past year, those who anticipated a cozy retirement are now rethinking those plans. But the core problem is that asset values (houses, too) have grown at […]
Read moreIt is not often that Canada makes the news in the US. Here’s the story from the New York Times summarizing the latest employment data, the economic update and the resulting political crisis. If we use the factor of ten rule of thumb, our drop of 70,600 jobs compares poorly to 533,000 lost in the US (although I do find […]
Read moreMuch of the debate about economic stimulus has been on infrastructure (picture the Hoover Dam, as Stephen Gordon comments). But there is more! One neglected area is around income support, including EI, the CCTB, GST credit and provincial social assistance programs. Below is the quick synopsis from the CCPA’s alternative economic and fiscal update, and thankfully, the Caledon Institute has […]
Read moreJames Galbraith kicks so much ass in this comment about a recent Paul Krugman column that I have to quote it for posterity’s sake (he basically agrees with PK). The question: Is the deficit a threat to future recovery. The answer: No. The question is grossly misconceived. Right now and for the immediate future, the budget deficit is the only […]
Read moreRalph Nader and Toby Heaps make an excellent case for a global carbon tax. With an Obama administration there is the possibility of such a thing happening, and it would be much more sensible that a complicated cap-and-trade system that will take years to get up and running. Even if a North American cap-and-trade system emerges that does not fall […]
Read moreOver at Worthwhile Canadian Initiaitive, Stephen and Nick have been making the point that “Canada is not the United States, we are not in recession (although the odds that we will be soon are much better than even), and there’s no reason to rush into a program of public works”. To some extent, they are right, and that go-slow approach […]
Read moreThis political crisis is completely the fault of the Prime Minister. Having laid the groundwork for a solid economic update last week – by saying in Lima that he had learned the lessons of the Great Depression and that he would not rule out deficits – what was tabled was a plan that did nothing to address concerns about the […]
Read moreA friend of mine did this up. Please share it.
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