1y ago

‘No urgency’ for Bank of Canada to cut rates as economy skirts recession

globalnews.ca /news/10325578/canada-gdp-q4-2023/

The slowdown in Canada's economy hasn't yet met the bar for a technical recession amid modest real GDP growth in the fourth quarter of the year, Statistics Canada says.

13 comments

I see we have moved the goal post to a "technical recession" now.
- Maybe I'll be able to live in a "technical home" soon.
  
  Maybe I'll technically won't live paycheck to paycheck.
No surprise here. Frankly getting sick of decades of media conflating GDP with the wellbeing of citizens as opposed to the largest, most powerful financial interests. Yes there's a correlation there, but we would be using far more accurate and direct metrics if the status of citizens was the actual goal.
I'm honestly a bit surprised. I was betting initially that we'd keep increasing throughout 2024, so the mere fact that talks are revolving around "remaining high" instead of further increases is, to my pessimistic prediction, a good development.
No urgency
Meanwhile people are facing financial struggles with stupid high food prices and out of budget mortgage renewals.
Let them eat cake....
- and lots of people losing their jobs, but hey sure, take your time bank of Canada, no rush
  
  Job losses is the stated goal of the BoC. Job losses dampen consumer spending, which slows down purchases, which (theoretically) stops prices increasing.
- High interest rates tend to prevent further inflation, although it's a fine balance. In other words, high food prices isn't quite the argument for lower rates that you seem to think it is.
  
  Higher interest rates are impacting Canadians in every corner of life. Food costs... mortgages... fuel... they all domino and collapse together. The lack of urgency is directly hurting the vulnerable portion of our society. There's no easy fix. Drop interest rates too fast and you risk pushing inflation back up... don't drop interest rates fast enough and you risk pushing a significant portion of the population into bankruptcy or homelessness (not just home owners... also renters who are forced to absorb that same interest rate hike in the form of higher rents). Within my circle of friends. several have been forced to close businesses because of the impact of the rapid increase in interest rates. It's not the base rate itself, so much as the speed with which it was increased which was faster than their businesses could absorb.
  As for mortgage renewals themselves... the insanity of the Canadian system of the typical 5-year renewable mortgages is just plain vanilla stupid. It makes everyone incredibly susceptible to microeconomics instead of averaging out the risk on a macro scale like most other countries do.
As Forest Gump always says, "recession is as recession does"

13 comments