Since October, 2008, the national unemployment rate has jumped sharply from 6.3% to 7.7% – driven entirely by job losses. The participation rate has fallen over the same period, from 67.8% to 67.4%. If this had not happened, the rise in the unemployment rate would have been even greater. As well, we have seen a shift to part-time jobs. The […]
Read moreTrade Unions to G20: Â Half Measures Will Not Fix Broken Global Economy Brussels, 23 March 2009 (ITUC OnLine): In a worldwide push for action by G20 governments to pull the global economy out of recession and chart a new course for job creation, financial regulation and global governance, trade unions across the world are today delivering a common set of […]
Read moreAh plastic. What’s not to love? Convenient? Check. Light in the pocket? Check. Monthly bill summaries? Check. Free short-term credit? Check (provided you pay your bills in full, on time). Benefits (free car rental insurance, points, cash back etc): Check AND… Take from the poor and give to the rich? err… wait a minute. Unfortunately, credit cards — especially those […]
Read moreI happened to listen to the end of week media pundits on CBC Newsworld and CBC Radio late Friday afternoon. Most – especially Don Martin and Joan Bryden on Newsworld – seemed perplexed as to why former Bank of Canada Governor David Dodge might have chosen to be distinctly more gloomy abour our economic prospects than Steven Harper or Mark […]
Read moreSome weekend reading: Amartya Sen, that other voice of sanity among recent Nobel laureates in economics, draws lines between the current economic crisis and the history of economic thought (with an emphasis on Smith, Keynes and Pigou), and what that all means for a “new capitalism”. Then, over at the Financial Times, a whole series looks at the future of […]
Read moreThe IMF released the results of its Article IV consultation with Canada, giving us an outsider’s take on how well we are handling the global economic crisis. But it is hard to know what to take away if left to the mainstream press, when the business page headline in the Globe and Mail is “IMF dashes hope of short recession” […]
Read moreI cannot say that I have ever wanted to quote Thomas Friedman. He has been such a booster for globalization, full of breathless praise for capitalism. I confess, I have never read any of his books for precisely those reasons. Someone gave me The World is Flat once and I could not stomach it, although I did love Ed Leamer’s […]
Read more(Additions made to this post since first posting.) The Prime Minister’s optimistic remarks about the prospects for Canada to get out of the recession faster than other countries just as the IMF and World Bank were announcing a Great Recession ring rather hollow (though, in truth, if I were in his shoes I would not be inclined to spread further […]
Read moreNot deficit, with a small d, but Depression with a big one. By now, everyone has come around to accepting that we are in a recession. Even though we have not had the rule-of-thumb two quarters of negative growth, rising unemployment, collapsing housing starts, drops in retail sales and so forth all tell us we are in a recession. Technically […]
Read moreHaving dropped its overnight interest rate to 0.5%, the Bank of England also announced a package of quantitative easing, of some £75 to 150 billion worth: It will create £75bn and use it to buy government bonds (gilts) and corporate debt over the next three months to boost the flow of money in the economy. The Bank has been given […]
Read moreThe Canadian media didn’t pay much attention to this economic crisis before the stock markets plunged last fall, and that has continued to be a major focus. But this focus on the stockmarket and the mistaken perception that this crisis is all the fault of the U.S., is leading to the overly optimistic forecasts of recovery. There’s been very little attention […]
Read moreOne of the silliest leads to an economic story I have read in a long time is on the front page of today’s Globe under this headline: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090303.wreconomy03/BNStory/Business “It’s Not all Doom and Gloom: GDP’s Drop Suggests Recession Will be Short.” The huge drop in output last quarter is perversely seen by the writer and some supporting bank economists as […]
Read moreIn the last few months, governments here and abroad have made every effort to “turn on the taps” of credit — in Canada, we have more than half a dozen such programs (and counting) under the banner of the EFF (Extraordinary Financing Framework), including (but not limited to): the IMPP (InsuranceMortgage Purchase Program); the CSCF (Canadian Secured Credit Facility); the […]
Read moreI really enjoyed a recent piece by Tom Palley “After the Bust: The Outlook for Macroeconomics and Macroeconomic Policy.”  He argues with great assurance that only progressive Post Keynesian analytics can explain the crisis, and that we won’t get out of it with a bit of Keynesian tweaking of the neo liberal paradigm. http://www.levy.org/vdoc.aspx?docid=1116 “Change†was the buzzword of the […]
Read moreFaced with a nasty recession at its doorstep, the BC budget is uninspiring and underwhelming in its ambition. Overall there is little that actively plans for a recession, preferring instead a steady-as-she-goes budget, perhaps aimed at cultivating the image of responsible economic managers in a time of crisis. There are no tax cuts or drastic spending cuts, thankfully, but nor […]
Read moreIn today’s Vancouver Sun, Neils Veldhuis and Milagros Palacios act as yang to my yin on the oped page. Their pre-budget oped seems strangely distant from the day-to-day reality of a recession that is unfolding in BC and elsewhere. Their response could have been written two or five years ago: the solution is to cut taxes and spending, and all […]
Read moreI have an oped in today’s Vancouver Sun, juxtaposed against the Fraser Institute, unfortunately. I’d like to think mine is much more timely and appropriate given the current economic situation (I’ll get to theirs in a subsequent post). BC Needs an Action Plan to Fight a Nasty Recession On February 17 the BC government will table the province’s first recession […]
Read moreThe Canadian Bankers’ Association must be happy. They’ve somehow managed to convince pundits south of the border, and even a few here who really ought to know better, that they’ve somehow been able to weather the economic and financial storm with absolutely no help from the federal government. The most recent evidence for this position is this editorial by Newsweek […]
Read moreI found this piece by David Harvey to be an absolutely brilliant and compelling analysis of just how difficult it will be to get out of this crisis, especially now that the global economy is visibly in free fall before our eyes. His argument is that there is no adequate political base in the US to sustain a solution radical […]
Read more(I prepared these as speaking notes for a workshop. They cover a lot of ground covered on this blog but they may be of interest.) The rapid descent of the global economy into what even the International Monetary Fund has begun to call a Depression will see very rapidly rising unemployment in Canada and around the world, likely to the […]
Read moreA year after crunching the numbers and coming to the conclusion that an economic downturn spelled deficits, I got this hat tip in Maclean’s: It’s true that there was no consensus forecast, through most of last year, that saw Canada suffering a deep recession in 2009, and a return to staggering deficits in Ottawa. However, it’s false to suggest that […]
Read moreToday’s Statistics Canada release of January employment numbers reveals staggering job losses: Employment fell by 129,000 in January (-0.8%), almost all in full time, pushing the unemployment rate up 0.6 percentage points to 7.2%. This drop in employment exceeds any monthly decline during the previous economic downturns of the 1980s and 1990s. More jobs were lost in January than in […]
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 morePEF people are not the only ones who correctly anticipated some of our recent economic and fiscal events. Jamie Galbraith also saw a lot of this coming in his book The Predator State. With no further ado, I’m posting an enthusiastic review of the book by fellow traveler and Sorbonne PhD economics graduate Henry Sader:
Read moreI’ve just read an excellent paper “From Financial Crisis to Depression and Deflation” by Hansjorg Herr of the Berlin School of Economics, circulated by the Global Union Research Network (but not yet posted to their web site.) Herr argues that demand deflation is inevitable in a downturn like the one we are in, but this becomes really dangerous for the […]
Read moreWhat a difference a year makes. A year ago anybody who proposed nationalizing the banks in Canada, the United States or the U.K. would probably have been dismissed as a looney lefty. Now widescale nationalization of major banks is being raised as a serious alternative in leading articles in the Economist and the New York Times. An on-line debate of […]
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 morehas just been published and is avalaible here. It largely confirms research conducted by PEF members on household wealth, indebtedness and income. The report highlights the state of financial precarity of many households, the gap between income and spending, the growing debtload and the important impact the “recession” (if we still want to call it that, given its deflationary driven […]
Read moreA regular reader of Relentlessly Progressive Economics who works at a financial research firm has made a music video about the financial crisis:
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