Guess the caption

   …I’m guessing yours isn’t the one currently on the website I took it from:  Jane New spends some time removing the ice build-up on her car before heading out in downtown Toronto on Thursday, Nov. 22, 2007. The forecast calls for up to 10 cm of snow by nightfall. Or do helicopters come withcontinue reading

Mark these words

There’s usually a lag between economic cycles in the US and in Canada — a year and a half to two years seems to be the accepted lag time for real estate — which is why I’m constantly surprised to see economists committing things like this to paper — exclamation points and all: While somecontinue reading

Back to reality

I was going to write something snarky earlier today about how Lululemon was taking its approach to countering reports that its clothing might not carry the health benefits advertised from four-year-olds: Mr. Meers said that to create the special fibre for Lululemon’s T-shirts, SeaCell is combined with a cellulose and spun into special SeaCell fibre.continue reading

Lu-lu land

Yoga clothes maker Lululemon’s shares swooned yesterday after independent tests called into question the claims it makes about one of its products: According to product tags, one of its lines of shirts, called VitaSea, is made with a fabric that is 24 per cent seaweed. The company says the fabric releases “marine amino acids, mineralscontinue reading

No wooden nickels here

Toronto City Council is still admirably focused on carving out savings and weeding out inefficiencies where they can. Councillor Howard Moscoe, for example, sees an opportunity in enforcing the superiority of the mighty loonie: “There’s a glut of U.S. coins being dumped in the economy,” Moscoe (Ward 15, Eglinton-Lawrence) said yesterday. “The city’s going tocontinue reading

That and 50 cents will get you a house on the Bridle Path

An otherwise gloomy Report on Business article on the Canadian economy searches hard, and finds a silver lining: The bright spot is that companies are diversifying away from the U.S. Three-quarters of Canadian exports go to the U.S., down from 81 per cent five years ago. Bright indeed. Diversification has its proponents. Where is Canadacontinue reading

Big Brother lives in your phone

Firm to use cellphone data to map traffic in real time One the one hand — cool and very useful way to avoid traffic jams. Good excuse to buy an iPhone so you have a screen large enough to make sense of whatever data map becomes available. On the other — why are so manycontinue reading

Hear that hissing sound?

That’s the “loud signal of how the Canadian dollar is affecting exports,”: “For the third quarter as a whole, international trade is going to subtract meaningfully from the gross domestic product, likely to the tune of a couple percentage points,” said Jacqui Douglas, economics strategist for TD Securities. Hang on a sec… a couple ofcontinue reading