The Greek Crisis

Greece 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. […]

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No Recovery for the Unemployed

The 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 […]

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GDP: The Road to Recovery?

Today’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) release paints a significantly improved picture of the Canadian economy. GDP rose by 0.4% in November. Statistics Canada also revised upward its previously released figures. GDP grew by 0.3% instead of 0.2% in October and 0.5% instead of 0.4% in September. While these figures are encouraging, they imply a slower annual growth rate than the 5.7% […]

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How Markets Fail

If you want to be reminded of the myriad of ways in which markets fail, you will welcome the new and timely book by John Cassidy titled simply How Markets Fail. Cassidy is not only an economist but a rare one who can write. Indeed, he writes so well that he is a regular contributor to the writerly The New […]

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Productivity and Jobs

There 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 […]

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Work and Labour in Canada

CSPI 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 […]

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Tackling economists

This month, I strangely find myself of the cover of BC Business magazine, along with four other economists (online version here). All but one academic are policy-oriented economists who comment regularly on the BC economic scene. The tag line for the cover goes like this: The Economists: They were supposed to predict the Great Recession but didn’t. Some even say […]

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An American Jobs Plan

The Economic Policy Institute in the US have released a five point American Jobs Plan which, hopefully, will be a major focus of discussion at the soon to be convened Presidential Jobs Summit. http://www.epi.org/index.php/american_jobs/american_jobs_plan Speaking to a joint CLC/CCPA meeting a couple of weeks ago, EPI President Larry Mishel – who has been invited to the Summit – said that […]

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Laboured Data – Reading the Recession Right

I purchase a monthly unadjusted Labour Force Survey data series from StatsCan that provides monthly labour force trends by age, sex, province, and type of job (full-time, part-time, by industry, and by status – self-employed or employed). This is a helpful addition to the published monthly stats in The Daily, which use seasonally adjusted numbers from the Labour Force Survey. […]

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Economic Bill of Rights

I got speak on a panel for the BC Cooperative Association this week after a screening of Michael Moore’s new film, Capitalism: A Love Story. I thought it was quite well done, and better than I expected. Less of the MM kitsch and a fairly broad sweep over the history and current foibles of American capitalism. While this approach means […]

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Bubblenomics is Alive and Well in Canada

Here is a guest post from BC union (Steelworker) researcher Kim Pollock. By Kim Pollock There is growing evidence that a new stock-market bubble is growing daily, right before our very eyes. But while stock-market prices and market capitalization grow, there are still few signs of real economic recovery. In Canada for instance, real gross domestic product decreased 0.5 percent in […]

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The Wall Street Journal wants a new tax on big financial institutions

The WSJ is concerned about the implicit subsidy provided to financial institutions that are “too big to fail”(TBTF). Given the obvious willingness of the US government to support Wall Street titans during the height of the financial crisis, the market is pricing in the expectation that the government stands behind those institutions regarded as TBTF. This implicit guarantee allows the […]

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The Economic Crisis and Labour Disputes

Jim has written a couple of posts about “the current mini wave of industrial unrest in Canada.” My union recently joined the fray by striking against Vale Inco. While several prominent strikes have recently captured Canadian headlines, I wondered whether the economic crisis has actually led to more labour disputes. On the one hand, concessionary demands from employers typically provoke […]

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Davidson: Efficient Market Theory Vs. Keynes’s Liquidity Theory

Paul Davidson gave a great talk to the Progressive Economics Forum at the recent Canadian Economics Association meetings. Below is a teaser; the full talk is here. ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS OF THE OPERATION OF A CAPITALIST ECONOMY: EFFICIENT MARKET THEORY VS. KEYNES’S LIQUIDITY THEORY by Paul Davidson, Editor, Journal of Post Keynesian Economics Politicians and talking heads on television are continuously […]

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Bonds, lame bonds

Below is a dispatch on bond rating agencies from my former CCPA colleague, Stuart Murray: Here is some more grist for the blog.  Bloomberg just published a very interesting and informative article on the role of the bond rating agencies in the current meltdown. http://bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=au4oIx.judz4&refer=home The pitchforks are out for Moody’s and S&P, as they gave glowing ratings for the […]

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BC’s economy and the Liberal platform

With my oped last week on the NDP platform making me less than popular over at NDP HQ, today the Sun published my take on the Liberals’ platform, thereby guaranteeing that the list of Christmas parties I get invited to dwindles to next to nothing. BC’s Economic Challenges and the Liberal Platform By Marc Lee The BC Liberal platform features […]

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Have the media learned anything from the crisis?

It makes my blood boil when I see headlines like this one from the Globe online: “Economic optimism boosts markets”. They are, of course, not talking about the markets that matter for most families’ day-to-day lives – those markets are still tanking. No, the Globe is talking about the stock market, as if an uptick of optimism among our financial […]

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The G-20 Meeting and Canadian vulnerability facing the global economic crisis

A missive from CCPA Executive Director Bruce Campbell: The G-20 the leaders’ meeting in London on April 2 will be a important test of whether the major nations are up to the challenge of confronting this recession and preventing it from becoming a depression. Will their collective response of monetary, fiscal and financial reform measures be bold enough and sufficiently […]

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Keynes and the 2009 Manitoba Budget

From Lynne Fernandez and Errol Black, of CCPA’s Manitoba office: Budget day always presents an opportunity to contemplate the state of society, and this year in particular has most of us pondering the current economic mess we are in. How did this crisis happen? How and when will we move back to more stable times? This year’s provincial budget takes […]

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Is the stimulus killing the P3 model?

While BC has not formally abandoned the P3 model, there is a notable absence of new P3 announcements at a time when billions of dollars are being channeled to infrastructure spending. If P3s really provided value for money and brought the benefits of private sector efficiency and innovation to the delivery of public-sector infrastructure, then why aren’t we seeing more […]

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Will the G-20 Leaders Save the World?

The global economy is in free fall, gripped by what the International Monetary Fund calls the“Great Recession.” In a crisis that is unfolding everywhere at once, global trade and production are slumping, unemployment is soaring, pension funds are evaporating, big global banks are still teetering on the edge of insolvency (if they are not already insolvent), stock markets are cratering, […]

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The IMF is up to its old tricks

The IMF’s reputation took a real beating during the Asian financial crisis more than a decade ago. During a financial panic, it decided to impose contractionary monetary and fiscal policies on countries that came to it needing funds in the short-term. I won’t get into the details but Stiglitz’s Globalization and its Discontents and Krugman’s Return of Depression Economics are […]

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The Public Sector Recession

Most regular folks and media pundits seem to assume that the public sector is recession-proof – hence all those nasty calls for wage freezes, cuts and pension rollbacks on the part of supposedly cosseted government workers from the CFIB and other right-wingers. In point of fact, it’s a myth. Since October, 2008 – when employment began to fall – through […]

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