Op-Eds
The Bank of Canada held its policy rate at 5 per cent Wednesday – a smart move.
Although the central bank’s governing council may have made its decision ahead of the weak GDP numbers released last week, those numbers underlined the reasons to hold. Real GDP contracted at an annualized rate of 0.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2023 and fell 0.2 per cent month-over-month in June (annualized as well). Looking ahead, Statistics Canada’s advanced estimate for July was flat. The household consumption the bank has been battling finally seems to be flagging. Data on bank deposits and job vacancies also testify to an economy losing steam.
Monetary policy works with a lag, and these latest figures suggest…
On Wednesday, the Bank of Canada increased its policy rate to 5 per cent, a level not seen since March, 2001. Citing continuing tightness in labour markets and still-firm consumer spending, the bank reasoned there is still excess demand in Canada’s economy, and that Wednesday’s rate hike was necessary to continue to bring activity in line with productive potential. But if that adjustment is already happening, this hike may turn out to be one too many.
Among the many challenges a central bank faces in a fight against high inflation is the mixed signals it gets as it hikes rates to get inflation down. In Canada, the year-over-year headline inflation rate fell to 3.4 per cent in May. However, most of that was driven by a fall in…
Steve Ambler is professor of economics, Université du Québec à Montréal and David Dodge Chair in Monetary Policy at the C.D. Howe Institute, where Jeremy Kronick is director, monetary and financial services research.
Amid conflicting signals, the Bank of Canada decided to press the brakes on the economy a little harder this week, raising the overnight target rate by 25 basis points to 4.75 per cent. And with that, the conditional pause the Bank of Canada announced in January ends. We aren’t so sure it should have.
First, the case for the hike.
The year-over-year increase in the Consumer Price Index (headline inflation), rose in April from March, from 4.3 to 4.4 per cent – the first…
What triggered the sharp rise in Canadian inflation in spring 2021 is still a matter of debate. And it’s a debate that matters: the relative importance of the pandemic’s disruption of supply chains, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “greed,” or central banks’ financing of a surge in government spending will affect our response to future events. But once inflation gets started the initial causes are less important than the process that sustains it, which is a combination, on the one hand, of rising inflation expectations and costs and, on the other, of inadequate production.
When inflation has been low and stable — say two per cent — for some time then everyone knows that everyone knows that inflation will be about two per…
Last week, the Bank of Canada held its overnight rate, its benchmark policy rate, at 4.5 per cent. No surprises there. In its last announcement, the bank told us the data were consistent with their view that, with the target rate where it is, inflation would come back down to three per cent by the middle of this year. Data since have not changed governing council’s view that at present more tightening wasn’t necessary.
In fact, if anything, the major economic development over the last six weeks, the failures of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) and Signature Bank, as well as the emergency takeover of Credit Suisse by UBS Group AG, made caution even more prudent. Furthermore, it might actually make the…
