Rae Days were hated, but that doesn’t mean they were a bad idea. I thought at the time, and continue to think now, that shutting down services for a few days and having a limited number of unpaid days off in order to keep a greater people working full-time at full-time salaries is an excellent,continue reading
Dalton48 Archives
Dragging their feet against the inevitable
According to today’s paper, the City of Toronto plans to announce a deal to impose a five-cent tax on plastic bags at a news conference today with Loblaws, Sobeys, Metro, and their lobby group, the Canadian Council of Grocery Distributors. Missing in action? The news conference is not expected to include representatives of the Retailcontinue reading
Ideological cluelessness abounds
Harper speaks to reporters in Lima on November 23rd: “Recent private sector forecasts suggest the strong possibility of a technical recession at the end of this year and the beginning of next,” Harper said [November 23] at a news conference in Lima, where he was attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. “I am surprised atcontinue reading
The Shipping News
Someone told me yesterday that the Capesize cargo ships his company uses to import and export its product have fallen in price from $220,000 a day to $9,000 a day. That’s no typo — these ships can now be had for less than 10K per day. Daily rates are continuing to plummet. The Baltic Drycontinue reading
Ow, my neck
November 21, 2008: Harper calls crisis worst since 1929 October 7, 2008: “I think there’s probably a lot of great buying opportunities emerging in the stock market as a consequence of all this panic.” September 15, 2008: “My own belief is if we were going to have some sort of big crash or recession, wecontinue reading
I’m asking nicely
Late to the party, Scotia Economics conceded at last yesterday that the Canadian housing boom is over. But fear not — we’re still different: “This is not a ‘U.S.-style’ bust caused by overbuilding, speculative buying and imprudent lending, but rather a cyclical slowdown accompanied by a valuation adjustment in several large centres where booming demandcontinue reading
Moving on
I wondered about the 3 million job loss number tossed around by the automakers and the media. A former GM economist explains: Job losses would not be close to being as large as is claimed by the industry’s hired guns at the Center for Automotive Research (CAR). Among job losers if Detroit actually has tocontinue reading
You can see why the “progressive” doesn’t really fit
It’s back! Because it’s the only thing they can think of that would help the environment that requires absolutely no change in consumer behaviour! It’s the home retrofit program that the Liberals ran, the Conservatives killed, the Conservatives reintroduced, and that the Throne Speech suggests we can all look forward to being announced all overcontinue reading
A blogger bites back
I was going to post something else from Willem Buiter’s excellent Maverecon blog at FT.com — his thoughts on why Britain may face a currency crisis and a sovereign debt crisis, in addition to the calamitous economic situation it is already in. But then I came across this, which I enjoyed more. Buiter explains thatcontinue reading
From Iceland to Switzerland?
Isolated, proud people, European but not Euro-pean, if you know what I mean. OK, so one has lots of mountains and safe deposit boxes, and the other has tundra and a bank with a high-savings arm called Icesave that — wait for it — melted away. Iceland has been called the first casualty of thecontinue reading