Author: Sherry Cooper

In an evenly divided call by market analysts, the Bank of Canada maintained its target for the overnight rate at 1/2 percent. The Bank said that inflation prospects are largely as expected and that “the dynamics of the global economy are broadly as anticipated in the Bank’s October Monetary Policy Report (MPR).” Really?  Oil prices…

Expectations of a Bank of Canada rate cut next week are mounting and for good reason. The Canadian economy is showing signs of considerable weakness and business investment plans have been cut. Oil prices continue to decline sharply and Iranian oil supply will be coming on stream shortly. Energy companies continue to slash payrolls and…

From Business News Network (BNN): The impact of collapsing crude prices is putting a damper on Canadian business sentiment far beyond the oil patch, the Bank of Canada said in its quarterly business outlook survey. BNN speaks to Sherry Cooper, Chief Economist, Dominion Lending Centres for reaction.

For the first time in nine years, the U.S. Federal Reserve hiked their key policy rate–the overnight federal funds rate–by one-quarter percentage point (25 basis points) to a range of 1/4 to 1/2 percent. The policy-making Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) said that the stance of monetary policy remains accommodative, thereby supporting further improvement in…

Unfortunately, Statistics Canada had more bad news for us this morning–a weak November jobs report and a big decline in trade for October–both of which portend a marked slowdown in growth in the final quarter of this year. At the same time, the U.S. released a strong enough November employment report to assure that the…

The Bank of Canada kept the key overnight interest rate unchanged at 0.5 percent as expected, as the Federal Reserve is poised to hike rates for the first time in nearly 10 years. The Bank’s decision did not, however, reflect complacency with the state of the Canadian economy, but rather a hand-off to the much…

As politically popular as it is to spew “soak-the-rich” rhetoric during an election campaign, the reality is that it is a very inefficient way to raise revenues or to address income inequality. Indeed, it will actually shrink the economic pie. It provides a disincentive to entrepreneurial spirit and work effort and it will make it…

“There’s a crisis on youth unemployment and there’s a crisis on the hope that you can achieve, that you can get started,” Luisa Girotto, Starbucks Canada’s vice ­president of public affairs, said. “It’s not enough to say we’ll hire five, we’ll hire ten. It’s not about making a little dent.” Canada’s national youth unemployment rate was 13.5…

The jobs numbers released today for October exceeded expectations in both the U.S. and Canada. This was a particularly important report for the U.S., because it all but insures that the Federal Reserve will hike rates for the first time in a decade when they next meet on December 16. Interest rates in both Canada…