And your salary is still on par with thirty years ago.
Corporate profits are at 50-year highs, the unemployment rate is at a 30-year low, and Canada is sporting the best government finances in all of the G7,
And these guys say they need tax cuts. Gimme a break. They continue to fail to invest their capital in technology and tools. Relying instead on matching tax breaks, government investment, union pension funds and union give backs.
Of course we are better off than the U.S. which has given business tax cuts, only to face job cuts, offshoring, and a trillion dollar deficit. The basket case that is the US economy is relying on the housing boom and personal debt.
Meanwhile Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street investment bank, suggested yesterday Canada's fatter household savings could help it "decouple" from an expected slowdown in the United States. The bank noted U.S. household spending was 1.3% more than income in the first quarter while the savings rate has been negative for more than a year. Canada, meanwhile, has a 1.9% savings rate -- all the better to spend.
Inflation in Canada is the creation of one province, the same one that boomed in the late seventies and early eighties."There are increasing signs that Alberta's white-hot economy has morphed into a classic boom, replete with labour shortages, surging real estate prices, and thus very real inflation pressures," Douglas Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Nesbitt Burns, said in a report.
And with every boom comes a bust.
As we begin trading in the summer of 2006 I can't help but observe the remarkable resemblance between equity markets today and those of the summer of 1984.The bear of 1984 began when worries about rising interest rates caused a "correction" in the Dow Jones industrial average only days after the market hit an all-time high just shy of 1,300 during the week of Jan. 13, 1984. That so-called correction, unfortunately, persisted for months. I was an adviser at a downtown investment dealer and I sat with my peers feeling lost, adrift and without direction. One adviser nearby kept repeating, "There'll never be another up day, there'll never be another up day."Time may be right to limit exposure to Canadian currency
That was the day the market collapsed, oil prices dropped, and from Huston to Calgary the sound of petro capitalists hitting the streets was thunderous.
The good news is that while the boom is on, those in manufacturing and exporting who are crying the blues, will get no satisfaction from Sherriff Dodge.
Clement Gignac, chief economist at National Bank Financial, said Dodge kept his options open yesterday for the July 11 rate decision but sent a strong message that worries about the dollar won't dictate monetary policy. "He put in a little bit of uncertainty about his next move," said Gignac, who attended the speech. "But make no mistake, he was loud and clear that he does not control the Canadian dollar, so corporate Canada has to adjust to the new environment."
Won't clip loonie to suit exporters
More on Dodge
Also See
Loonie
Petro Dollar
Monopoly
Monopolies
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