It’s ALL About Doom and Gloom

One 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 […]

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It’s the Demand-Side Stupid — Why Credit Ain’t Like Water

In 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 […]

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The Crisis and Macro-Economic Theory

I 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 […]

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BC Budget 2009: Vanilla, No Sprinkles

Faced 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 […]

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Laughing All the Way to the err…Bank

The 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 […]

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Why Obama is Bound to Fail (?)

I 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 […]

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January marks highest monthly employment decline on record

Today’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 […]

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BC outlook: this is gonna hurt

Housing 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 […]

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Dangers of Wage Deflation

I’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 […]

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Nationalizing the banks

What 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 […]

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Vanier Institute’s report on family finances 2009

has 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 […]

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Misaligned Priorities

So Industry Minister Tony Clement is now insisting that cuts to workers wages will be a condition of any bail-out package for the auto industry.  This comes after an economic statement that was going to remove the right to strike and legislate public sector wages, and before a budget that could also include wage cuts or constraints for workers. I don’t recall constraints […]

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The Battle for History II: Coyne’s Crisis

The Maclean’s cavalry has ridden over the hill to help Bill Robson defend the conventional wisdom against Keynesian fiscal policy. Here are four problems with Andrew Coyne’s “Special Report” (which I am having trouble finding online) in the latest edition of Maclean’s magazine: 1. Coyne presents as evidence of failed deficit spending a 1991 paper by Christina Romer, who is now […]

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The “Right” Stimulus Debate

We are now into full blown Budget consultation mode, with MPs of all parties going through a bit more than the usual pretence of listening before the actual Budget is finally put to bed by the government a few days hence. For once, even the Conservative inner circle seem a bit unsure of where to go. Below the closed (charmed) […]

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Re Regulating Finance

http://www.tuac.org/en/public/e-docs/00/00/03/91/document_doc.phtml This is a very useful discussion/policy paper from Pierre Habbard of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD. Executive summary 1. The latest phase of the financial crisis that broke out in the summer 2007 was marked by a dramatic turn in mid-September with the collapse of Wall Street, US insurance group AIG, and the subsequent asset destruction […]

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Labour’s Plan to Deal With the Economic Crisis

Labour’s Plan was developed by the CLC in consultation with economists from our affiliates. It has been submitted to all of the party leaders and economic critics. The Summary is followed by elaboration of each of the five main points. (This document does not deal with financial regulation and international economic issues.) http://canadianlabour.ca/sites/clc/files/laboursplanfullEn.pdf

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Reading the Crisis

I highly recommend “The Credit Crunch: Housing Bubbles, Globalisation and the Worldwide Economic Crisis” by Graham Turner. “Graham Turner is one of only a handful of economists to understand the roots of the current financial crisis, its implications for all of us and crucially what should be done now. I strongly recommend you read this book.” —Larry Elliott, Guardian “A […]

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Ontario Falls Off a Cliff

The Ontario economy fell off a cliff last month as the US meltdown intensfied the already virulent manufacturing and forest jobs crisis. An almost unprecedented 42,000 manufacturing jobs were lost in November in Ontario alone – that’s one in twenty of the total, and more than the total of manufacturing employment in either Oshawa or Windsor. And 20,000 jobs were […]

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Stimulus – Between Orthodoxy and the Unthinkable

The ever deepening global and national economic crisis has produced highly divergent views among mainstream economists on how radical a change is needed to orthodox fiscal and monetary policies with  their focus on balanced budgets and low inflation. At one extreme, the recent Economic and Fiscal Statement indicates that the prevailing Department of Finance view is still that only very […]

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Stimulated by Tax Cuts?

Even as Conservatives jettison some of the worst features of Thursday’s economic statement, they appeared on this morning’s TV news programs reiterating that their tax cuts are worth 2% of GDP – the amount of stimulus recommended by the International Monetary Fund. Almost a year ago, Marc began noting the dubiousness of casting tax cuts from the 2007 Economic Statement […]

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Economic Crisis and Coalition

Canadian Labour Congress Statement Why We Need a Coalition Government to Deal with the Economic Crisis. The Economic and Fiscal Update released by Finance Minister Flaherty on November 27, 2008 demonstrates that the Conservative government has no intention of seriously dealing with the global economic crisis and the prospect of fast rising unemployment. The recent G-20 Summit meeting called on […]

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We need public investment

http://news.guelphmercury.com/Opinions/article/409306 Today’s economic update by Jim Flaherty must provide investment in jobs the canadian press November 27, 2008 Ken Georgetti Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty must use today’s economic update to become part of the solution to our ever deepening economic crisis. Governments, leading economists and even the International Monetary Fund agree that cutting interest rates alone will not save […]

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Life After the Economic Crisis

Much has been written on this blog about immediate responses to the crisis. We have analyzed proposed measures in depth and advocated for bold novel solutions. But it seems to me that we haven’t spent much time looking forward a little past the here and now. Last week, I was contacted by a Montreal-based journalist, Alex Roslin, who was looking […]

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