In the fall of 2020, barely noticed amid the stresses of COVID-19, Canada’s economy passed a peculiar milestone. Residential investment surpassed all other business investment — more than for nonresidential structures, machinery and equipment, and intellectual property products combined. That was unprecedented. As recently as the early 2000s, it would have been inconceivable. As a nation, we risk ending up with nice roofs over our heads, but without the incomes we need for everything else we want. House-rich, and everything-else-poor.
Because a growing economy and inflation make recent experience hard to compare with what happened decades ago, it helps to measure investment relative to GDP. Until the…
La puissante contre-attaque occidentale ne parviendra pas à stopper l’agression barbare subie par les Ukrainiens, mais imposera à la Russie un lourd tribut. Tous les pays pâtiront du conflit, certains plus que d’autres.
Vladimir Poutine affirme que l’Ouest a déclaré une guerre économique à la Russie. Pour une fois, il dit vrai. Nos gouvernements ont imposé les sanctions les plus sévères, décuplées par la réaction des marchés et des entreprises.
La première ronde de mesures a frappé les oligarques, le président et son cercle rapproché avec des interdictions de séjour et le gel de leurs avoirs à l’étranger.
Ensuite, on a débranché plusieurs banques russes du réseau mondial de messagerie SWIFT, qui facilite les…
The Bank of Canada’s decision on Wednesday to start raising its target for the overnight rate of interest reflects its recognition that inflation has turned out to be higher and more persistent than it had been expecting, and that slack in the economy has now been absorbed, also faster than expected: as recently as December the bank had predicted slack would persist until the middle of this year.
Wednesday’s announcement stressed supply-side factors as the main reasons for high inflation: poor harvests and higher transportation costs, and higher energy and food-related commodity prices resulting from the invasion of Ukraine.
But there is another, often-neglected, demand-side factor that will…
