Mock Turtle

Adam Vaughan and Spacing want to name the Toronto Reference Library after Jane Jacobs.

On one hand I think it’s a great idea; on the other I wonder if Jacobs herself would’ve liked it or whether (with her deep distrust of credentials and her belief in natural systems) she’d prefer something a little …wilder.

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Do not eat your ballot (because you’re voting today, right? RIGHT?). It’s illegal.

I’m amused that a ballot-eating question made it into the FAQ. Just how F is that Q A’d, anyway?

Polls are open until 9:30 (EDT).

Elections Canada will assist with ballot-eating, ride-bribing, prison-sentence-serving and all other questions.

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Feeling poorer after checking your accounts online? Wondering how the five dog grooming businesses in your neighbourhood will fare during the recession? Well, here’s something else that will make you an adherent of the new austerity: the updated property assessments for 2008 will be mailed to old City of Toronto addresses the week of October 20.

Those assessments are based on prices in January 2008 — just off a few months from the peak of the now-declining housing market. Assessments have been frozen since 2005; any increases in property tax have been due to increases in the city’s mill rate.

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From The Great Crash, cited in today’s Globe:

“Always when markets are in trouble, the phrases are the same: ‘The economic situation is fundamentally sound’ or simply ‘The fundamentals are good.’

“All who hear these words should know that something is wrong.”

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Quotation of the Day for October 9, 2008

“They were waiting for a translation from the original Australian.”

- Bob Rae, Liberal Member of Parliament for Toronto Centre, jokingly explaining why the governing Conservative Party took so long to release their federal election campaign platform. He was referring to a scandal earlier in the campaign in which it was revealed that a 2003 speech delivered by Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper (now Canadian Prime Minister) in favour of the Iraq War was largely plagarized from a speech given two days prior by Australian Prime Minister John Howard.

[http://www.torontoobserver.ca/2008/10/08/tories-roasted-at-cbc-debate/]

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Via Naked Capitalism, an interesting outlook for oil demand from Oppenheimer. Most important for Western Canada’s oil sands production is this assessment:

We don’t expect OPEC to aggressively defend oil prices above $60/b, since higher prices slow economic and demand growth, which are not in OPEC’s best interests.

Could oil fall to $60? Well…

Given the bleak global economic outlook, we think world oil demand is likely to be substantially below current forecasts, as we expect steeper declines in developed countries and much smaller growth in developing countries. Despite the pullback from the $148/b record, we believe oil prices are still inflated and not supported by supply and demand, and the longer they remain high the deeper the recession is likely to be and the longer it will take for the global economy to recover. Lower oil prices could help boost consumer confidence and spending and accelerate economic recovery, which is also in the best interests of OPEC longer term.

And a good reminder about why oil price forecasts, and economic outlooks from mortgage-lending banks, deserve a heaping serving of skepticism. Note the ominous/optimistic last sentence:

Outrageous oil price predictions by investment banks have been self-fulfilling prophecies in recent years, since those banks are also among the largest oil traders as brokers and principals, dealers in financial derivatives, clearing houses for other traders and owners of energy assets. Tighter government regulations under a new administration are likely to curb their activities and deflate oil prices.

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The Star:

North York councillors peeved at being overruled by the Ontario Municipal Board – on a condo complex they didn’t want – exacted poetic justice yesterday by giving the project an address the developer won’t soon forget: OMB Folly.

…

Councillor David Shiner said the move may usher in a welcome precedent: “When we start having the OMB not only go against our council but our planning staff, we may be able to come up with some very creative names to help name these new developments that show up without city council or city staff support.”

Juvenile but amusing.

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Secular bear market? Not according to our Prime Minister, who, echoing the sage advice of W. those many years ago, urges you all to get out there and buy something.

“I think there’s probably a lot of great buying opportunities emerging in the stock market as a consequence of all this panic.”

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That’s the comforting assessment of a member of the European Central Bank’s governing council. Having spent much of last fall and this spring following the credit crisis, and trying to picture the changes it could bring about, I find myself oddly unmotivated to write about it now that, in many ways, the worst case scenario is playing itself out. But just a few notes on some interesting developments:

• Could the Euro be the next casualty? Varying decisions on guaranteeing deposits in certain EU countries such as Ireland are already causing problems, and attempts to agree on a coordinated action fell apart last week. The euro hit its lowest level against the yen in three years yesterday. GM has ceased all manufacturing in the eurozone (admittedly, this may just be a face-saving way to save some money for the beleaguered automaker). This crisis, and the coming recession (already official in France) are big tests for an eight-year-old.

• Decoupling never existed. The stock markets of the BRIC countries are down by two-thirds, which hurts domestic companies trying to raise cash. At the same time, panicky (and undercapitalized) European and North American banks are withdrawing money from the region to bolster their own faltering balance sheets. We’ll now see how much of this unprecendented, fast-growing domestic demand can be maintained without investment from abroad or domestic equity markets.

• Canadians, with the exception of the Prime Minister, are slowly waking up to the fact that we are, after all, part of the rest of the world. Canadians’ reluctance to acknowledge this is due to a few factors, I think:

1. a government that consistently spews a message of Canadian exceptionalism
2. reflexive anti-Americanism that makes Canadians only too happy to blame every aspect of the current crisis on incomprehensible greed of individual Americans
3. low levels of foreign news in Canadian newspapers and broadcasts that leave the average Canadian in the dark about the global nature of the credit crisis

The current meme of many, including the Prime Minister, is that Canada is doing everything right, and is just buffeted by the fierce winds blowing from elsewhere. To an extent, that’s true — we sell commodities that will be more or less demanded depending on the economic health of other nations. From another point of view, however, Canada has dropped the ball by allowing itself to become so heavily dependent on the commodities trade. Investment in infrastructure is years overdue, funding for research and new technology erratic and unfocused, and the current government left the manufacturing sector — which, contrary to many reports, is *not* an antiquated relic — out to dry by not taking any action to talk down the Canadian dollar when it could have. As a result, we have a less diversified economy than we should, which will make a commodities slump more painful for us than for most developed countries. The U.S. may be insolvent, but is has an extremely diversified economy, with many trading partners — one reason why the US dollar is still the landing spot for flights to safety, while the Canadian petrodollar looks increasingly risky.

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Things may be a little strange for the next few minutes. Blog-wise, I mean. I’m sure things are strange in other ways too but I’m not taking responsibility for strangeness beyond the blog.

edit — all done!

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