Reed Construction Data Chief Economist Alex Carrick discusses current developments in Canada's economic environment. He also shares light-hearted reflections on life and current events.
communities « market insights « notes from alex carrick
There is a reason to be fascinated by what is going on in China. That nation’s rapid growth is putting tremendous pressure on the world’s resources. This is driving up prices in many areas, from fertilizers and food, through energy and other commodities and on to downstream impacts on construction material costs even in North America.
It is generally accepted that the Chinese economy has been kept pumped up by government spending in order to impress the world while Beijing hosts the Summer Olympics in August of this year. But what happens after that? There are a number of reasons not to expect a massive collapse in the Chinese economy after the Summer Games.
Speculative swings in real estate prices, the stock market and now commodity prices have been playing havoc with the economy. The increase in the price of oil is now seriously delaying economic recovery.How do we get out of this mess? Let me make a case for a contrarian view on interest rates. This may seem like a harsh thing to say (particularly to those in construction), but the current level of interest rates is probably too low.
Yesterday, I wrote a story for Reed Construction Data’s Market Insights on the latest U.S. employment numbers, for June 2008. In this blog entry, let’s take a look at the some of the sub-sectors within the broader job categories. Most of what follows will focus on sectors and industries that have a particular construction connection.
In the movie, The French Connection, the Gene Hackman character asks one of the drug-dealing suspects if he is still “picking his toes in Poughkeepsie?” He knew one of the great secrets of comedy. The letter “p” is the funniest letter in the alphabet.
Japan has struggled with a decade of stagnation. There is relevance in considering Japan’s problems with respect to China’s economic prospects going forward. This is the second of a two-part study.
Japan had great economic success prior to its period of stagnation over the past decade. The rigidities in the Japanese system bear examining with respect to China's prospects going forward.
Two factors have thrown more attention on the export dependency of the provinces within Canada: (1) the increase in value of the Canadian dollar versus the U.S. dollar since early 2003; and (2) the impacts of the U.S. slowdown/recession on economic activity north of the border. TD Economics, in its recent Provincial Economic Outlook report, presented rankings for each province based on export sales to the U.S. and the world at large.
Towards the end of May, our daughter, Tammy-Li, needed ten dollars for the “book fair” at her school. This set off a chain reaction of serpentine financial dealings that was awesome in its complexity.
As I have mentioned before, I like “rules of thumb” because they help me to remember things and put them in perspective. Yesterday, I presented a way to organize and rank the populations of the provinces and regions in Canada. Today, I’ll take you through the nation’s major cities. Maybe some of these little “catch phrases” will stick in your mind.
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