So long, parity, we barely knew you

One week in, and the prevailing mood in 2008 is gloom: Globe and Mail: Mighty loonie may face eclipse “Everything is terrible now in Canada, from manufacturing to retail sales to tourism to exports,” said John Taylor, head of New York-based FX Concepts Inc. Happy new year! Outgoing Bank of Canada governor David Dodge pilescontinue reading

It takes a village

Perhaps it’s because I’m a non-parent, and/or because I’m the child of an immigrant mother so enthralled by her chosen home of Canada that she believed Canadians incapable of all ill, leaving her kids to fend for themselves on buses, subways, and trans-border flights to grandparents in the statistically more perilous 70s, but shouldn’t thecontinue reading

Hats off to Hearst

Someone gets smart: Instead of dropping its Canadian prices, a U.S. magazine publisher has quietly removed the American price for its magazines — leaving only the Canadian price on the cover. You go, Hearst Magazines! What the market will bear! The hyperbolic reaction ranges from calling the move a “shell game” (The Star headline) tocontinue reading

Fun with numbers

Pace the Globe and Mail’s John Partridge, a lovely man, a lede like this always makes me question whatever follows: You should probably ignore all the headlines you have seen shrieking about the vast amount of cross-border shopping — physical and online — triggered by the soaring Canadian dollar. Really? Why? Because Stats Can sayscontinue reading

For all your bludgeoning needs

From CBS Marketwatch:  World of Warcraft Visa. This comes from the online role-playing game World of Warcraft and gives cardholders points toward free game time. For every 1,500 points earned, the cardholders gets one free month of play time.

Separated, but living in the same house

Oh, I do love a good theory. Especially when it’s clearly spelled out in a way that makes it easy to poke holes in. So thanks to BMO Nesbitt Burns’ Doug Porter for his irresistible musings on decoupling: Despite the tight linkages, there are four reasons to believe domestic growth will fare better than thecontinue reading

What a coincidence!

From Saturday’s Financial Post: It was one of those rare coincidences which cause the view to completely change. The same week in early November that the loonie hit a record high of US$1.10, Canada reported a record quarterly drop in its trade surplus — it fell by more than a third to $10.7-billion in thecontinue 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