The Bank of Canada Hiked Rates Again And Isn’t Finished Yet The Governing Council of the Bank of Canada raised its target for the overnight policy rate by 75 basis points today to 3.25% and signalled that the policy rate would rise further. The Bank is also continuing its policy of quantitative tightening (QT), reducing its […]

Macklem’s Op-Ed (emphasis is mine) National Post Comment, August 16, 2022 Inflation in Canada has come down a little, but it remains far too high. After rising rapidly to reach 8.1 per cent in June, inflation as measured by the consumer price index (CPI) was 7.6 per cent in July.The good news is that it looks […]

Gasoline Prices Dipped, But No Time To Celebrate While we are all grateful that gasoline prices declined from record highs in July, today’s release of the July inflation data shows that the underlying inflation momentum remains too strong for comfort. Governor Macklem will likely continue to hike the policy rate aggressively when they next announce […]

Housing Slowdown Continues in July Statistics released today by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show that the slowdown that began in March in response to higher interest rates continued in July, albeit at a slower pace. Home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® Systems fell by 5.3% between June and July 2022. The pace of home […]

Finally, Some Good News on the Inflation Front It was widely expected that US consumer price inflation would decelerate in July, reflecting the decline in energy prices that peaked in early June. The US CPI was unchanged last month following its 1.3% spike in June. This reduced the year-over-year inflation rate to 8.5% from a […]

The Canadian Economy Is Slowing–Job Markets Will Begin To Shift The July employment report, released this morning by Statistics Canada, is a real head-scratcher. The job numbers fell for a second consecutive month, but so did the number of job seekers, so the unemployment rate remained unchanged at a historic low of 4.9%. I have […]

Canadian Inflation Surged to 8.1% in June Another bad inflation number was posted today. The rate of consumer inflation continued to rise, reaching 8.1% year over year (y/y) in June, following the 7.7% gain in May. The increase was the largest yearly change since January 1983. The acceleration in June was mainly due to higher […]

House Price Decline Accelerated in June Statistics released today by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show that the slowdown that began in March in response to higher interest rates has broadened. Home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® Systems fell by 5.6% between May and June 2022, taking second-quarter sales down sharply (see chart below). The actual […]

A Super-Sized Rate Hike, Signalling More To Come  The Governing Council of the Bank of Canada raised its target for the overnight policy rate by a full percentage point to 2-1/2%. The Bank is also continuing its policy of quantitative tightening (QT), reducing its holdings of Government of Canada bonds, which puts additional upward pressure […]

Statistics released today by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show that the slowdown that began in March in response to higher interest rates has broadened. In April, national home sales dropped by 12.6% monthly (m/m). National home sales fell by 8.6% between April and May, building on April’s decline, leaving monthly activity at pre-COVID […]