Further to my companion post (on the Commodity Price-Exchange Rate Transmission Mechanism), here is an op-ed from Buzz Hargrove that appeared in today’s National Post, responding to yesterday’s parity event. It reflects some of the arguments I made in the companion post about why, exactly, higher commodity prices drive our loonie higher. The policy implications of this view include some […]
Read moreWell, it happened. The petro-fueled loonie broke parity with the greenback yesterday, and is headed higher still. I can’t believe that so many people still interpret this as a symbol of our national renaissance. In fact, the reverse is true. The dollar’s flight both reflects, and simultaneously reinforces (in fine Kaldorian fashion) our regression into serving once again as a […]
Read moreIn successfully seeking the 1980 Republican nomination for President, Ronald Reagan embraced the Laffer Curve theory that tax cuts would increase tax revenues. At the time, rival candidate George Bush Sr. derided this notion as “Voodoo economics” and it has been since been discredited many times. Jack Mintz struggles to revive the theory in today’s 2007 Tax Competitiveness Report, declaring […]
Read moreThe Canadian Labour Congress sent the following letter to the Bank of Canada today. September 20, 2007 David A. Dodge Governor Bank of Canada 234 Wellington Street Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0G9 Dear Governor Dodge: I write to urge you to reduce interest rates by 0.5% on October 16th to match the recent US rate cut. My letter of June 27th […]
Read moreThere’s a piece by Heather Scoffield in today’s Globe on the issue of the impact of exchange rate appreciation on consumer prices. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070920.wdollar20/BNStory/Front TD Bank argues that only a modest portion of the fall in import prices is being passed on, while Philip Cross from Statscan argues there is a much tighter link. On the face of it, he has […]
Read moreA clear contradiction has emerged in John Tory’s election promises. It reflects an existing tension in the McGuinty government’s position. As noted previously on this blog, the Conservative Party’s election platform proposes that Ontario join TILMA. As reported in today’s Globe and Mail, Tory has pledged to require that provincially-funded institutions buy their food and beverages from Ontario producers. Such […]
Read moreCIBC World Market recently put out quite an interesting report on the future of world oil supply and demand and the implications for Canada. ( OPEC’s Growing Call on Itself.) http://research.cibcwm.com/economic_public/download/occrept62.pdf The major point is that OPEC countries plus other major oil producing countries such as Russia and Mexico are consuming a fast-rising share of their own oil output at […]
Read moreUpon returning from Montreal, where I volunteered for the NDP on by-election night, I discovered that the US Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a whopping half point. I do not have a fully-formed analysis of either Mulcair’s victory or the rate reduction, but would like to kick-off some discussion on this blog. Mulcair’s win strikes me as an important […]
Read moreI’ve pasted in below quite an interesting analysis of the current financial crisis, by Pierre Habbard of the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD. The Charts have gone missing but are not essential. Financialisation and the “sub-prime†financial crisis – Issues for future regulation TUAC Secretariat Paris, 5 September 2007 The phenomenal growth of the derivative […]
Read moreHuman Resources and Social Development Canada have posted a research report http://www.hrsdc.gc.ca/en/publications_resources/research/categories/inclusion/2007/sp_680_05_07_e/sp_680_05_07e.pdf It is no secret or surprise that new immigrants (86% of whom are workers of colour) face more significant labour market barriers than other working-age Canadians, and that they are at greater risk of experiencing poverty. But more empirical detail is always useful. This study uses StatsCan (SLID) […]
Read moreSeveral of us regularly provide media commentary through our jobs at the CCPA, CAW and CLC. Once in a while, reporters quote statements posted on this blog in that capacity. However, the Progressive Economics Forum itself rarely receives media coverage. The excerpts below are from page L4 of today’s Globe and Mail. This story drew upon my “Levitt’s Been Thunderstruck” post.  For […]
Read more“Dion Would Wield Tax Axe to Spur Growth” was the headline in Tuesday’s Financial Post. The story reported that “Mr. Dion said his party would look to cut taxes across the board” but that “He would not elaborate on which taxes he would cut.” However, Monday’s Liberal press release seemed quite clear about which taxes would be on the chopping […]
Read moreErin’s recent post http://www.progressive-economics.ca/2007/09/12/government-size-canada-us/ prompted me to read Ferris and Winer’s interesting piece on the size of government in Canada and the US. The underlying data for the article have been usefully posted by the authors at http://http-server.carleton.ca/~winers/ (You’ll have to find the spread sheet posted at that site under author’s papers, and then look at the sheet for functional […]
Read moreOn Monday, Ontario’s Institute for Competitiveness and Prosperity released a paper entitled, Prosperity, Inequality, and Poverty. As Andrew Sharpe pointed out in a review of Jack Mintz’s book, free-market “policy entrepreneurs” often completely ignore the distributional consequences of their recommendations. The Institute deserves credit for trying to grapple with distributional issues (and also for quoting Sharpe extensively). The Institute observes […]
Read moreThere are several interesting articles in the most recent (June 2007) issue of Canadian Public Policy, but the one that grabbed my attention examines the size of government in Canada and the US. Most commentators assume that the Canadian public sector is significantly larger. A few point out that the huge reduction of Canadian-government spending (relative to GDP) since the […]
Read moreStatistics Canada today released a study on immigrants in the job market, based on the recent inclusion of questions identifying immigration status in the Labour Force Survey. It’s no surprise to learn that unemployment levels are significantly higher among recent immigrants. In 2006, the unemployment rate among very recent immigrants (in Canada 5 years or less) was 11.5%, and it […]
Read moreThere’s no question that the Financial Post, as the National Post’s business section, tilts heavily to the right. However, today’s letters section (FP15) could almost have been copied and pasted from this blog. In the first letter, Shalom Schachter responds to the whiny Labour Day op-ed from John Mortimer of LabourWatch. In the second letter, Kris Larson notes that continued […]
Read moreThe Canadian Labour Congress news release follows: Employment statistics: no plan for coming layoffs, Georgetti says OTTAWA – “With so many high profile layoffs announced recently that have yet to come into effect, it is hard to find consolation in the modest employment creation statistics for the last month,” says Ken Georgetti, president of the Canadian Labour Congress in regard to […]
Read moreHere’s the link to a major empirical study on the impacts of the Liberal cuts to the Employment Insurance program, with a specific emphasis on impacts on women workers. The study is by Monica Townson and Kevin Hayes and was commissioned by Status of Women Canada , and quietly posted to their web site a couple of weeks ago.
Read moreThe Fraser Institute’s latest study of North American labour markets intends to demonstrate that public-sector employment, minimum wages, unionization, and labour laws that facilitate collective bargaining damage labour-market performance. However, its “Index of Labour Market Performance” measures the quantity of jobs with almost no regard for quality. Even this questionable index is not negatively correlated with the policies criticized by […]
Read moreJanice Kennedy has a pretty good assessment of the Afghanistan debate in today’s Ottawa Citizen. My only slight quibble is that she does not mention the Liberals, who got us into this quagmire.
Read moreHow do we explain the behaviour of the Japanese yen — which has not only avoided the major appreciation (against the U.S. dollar) that other major currencies have experienced (most acutely including Canada’s), but is actually down by over 15% since 2005 (despite Wall Street’s financial wobbles)? Japan has the world’s third largest trade surplus, so if exchange rates reflect […]
Read moreThe following column by Duncan Cameron is from rabble.ca: With the takeover of Stelco by U.S. Steel, Canada loses its last domestically owned steel producer. Despite urgings from the Steelworkers, the Canadian Autoworkers, and the Canadian Labour Congress, our provincial and federal governments have been unwilling to adopt a strategy to provide national direction to natural resource companies, and key industries. […]
Read moreI have just returned from the annual conference of the Canadian Association for Business Economics in Kingston. On Monday evening, we heard from Pierre Duguay, a Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada. Without specifically mentioning Jim’s Globe column, he suggested that some people mistook the Bank’s intervention in financial markets as a deviation from monetary policy’s exclusive focus on […]
Read moreAn interesting article just published by my friend Robert Blecker (American University) reinforces our concerns regarding the long-run impact of the loonie’s recent appreciation on the size and competitiveness of Canada’s manufacturing industry. Here’s the formal citation & abstract: The Economic Consequences of Dollar Appreciation for US Manufacturing Investment: A Time-Series Analysis Author: Robert A. Blecker a Affiliation: a American […]
Read moreHere’s an interesting sidebar to the current hissy fit roiling financial markets: It has turned out that Canada’s public debt is now dangerously low. Huh? We all know that where debt is concerned, private is good and public is bad. That’s why we cheer on consumers as they pump up their indebtedness to a record ratio (over 100%) of disposable income, […]
Read moreA friend just pointed a UN treaty (the International Covenant on Economic, social and cultural rights), to which Canada adhered in 1976, which states that signing parties should strive to tend towards free tuition for post-secondary education. It is in fact one of the “nine core international human rights treaty” (dixit UN website). The relevant article (see provision c) and […]
Read moreA couple of months ago, Robert Oxoby of the University of Calgary posted a joke paper comparing AC/DC’s original lead signer, Bon Scott, with his successor, Brian Johnson. The paper presented the results of an experiment in which test subjects responded less “rationally” to financial incentives in an “ultimatum game” when listening to Scott’s “It’s a Long Way to the […]
Read moreIn April 2006, Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams walked away from proposed Hebron development because the multinational oil companies were not offering sufficient benefits for his province. The national media and federal government heaped scorn on this decision. A couple of days ago, Williams secured a new deal that gives the province a 4.9% equity stake in Hebron, a 6.5% “super […]
Read moreForgive me for greeting the latest financial meltdown with a big yawn. We are facing a combination of two textbook cycles, neatly overlaying each other: 1. Classic speculative cycle:Â something catches the eye of speculators, they drive it up in price in search of (utterly unproductive) speculative profits, the rising price produces a self-fueling speculative bubble, and then something happens […]
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