Canada heading for recession, say economists

Canada heading for recession, say economists

Canada is headed into a worse recession than anyone expected, one that could last until almost 2010, said the country's top economists on Monday.

Staid financial watchers, who usually speak in measured tones, almost screamed the r-word in two separate events Monday.

"At this point, if this kind of volatility keeps up, I think we're looking at a much more serious downturn than a mild recession that most of us are talking about," said Doug Porter, with BMO Capital Markets, at a meeting of senior economists in Toronto.

Canada faces a financial perfect storm of a sputtering U.S. economy, tumbling oil prices and falling domestic demand that will conspire to hurt the country's growth prospects for the next few months, they said.

"[We're] forecasting Canadian and U.S. recessions, plus 100 basis points of [Bank of Canada] and Fed cuts that could come at any time. This is not just made-in-U.S.A. weakness as Canada faces its own home-grown recession signals," Scotiabank economists Derek Holt and Karen Cordes said in a morning commentary.

A recession is commonly defined as two or more quarters of negative GDP growth.






Full link here

www.cbc.ca...


So it looks like we here in cannuck land are going to be heading into hard time ourselves as well. I was really hoping that Canada would be able to hold out and remain stable and ride the storm of the US meltdown. But it looks like we are really tide into the US demise.

I'm going to hope and pray that we can all work through this and keep things going, even if it's slowly and ride this crap out.

Ahh. Ok, so Canadians what can we do to prepare ourselves for this?

Heading for hard times . . . .

Check out southwestern Ontario . . . the automotive sector is in ruins . . . there ain't nothin' left south of London, Ontario.

A real estate agent I know says his firm alone is getting 'power of sale' homes listed by banks at the rate of one a day and he can't get a bankrupcty trustee who's got enough spare time to deal with those because of the fact most of the trustees are dealing with failing businesses, most of them automotive but now spreading out through the communities in the spin off businesses that are now starting to fail.

It is economic scorched earth in that area already . . . and it's going to get WORSE??????

im not exactly sure what to do, as im not even close to ready for this, if our economy is as tied to the us as it is looking, then it looks like we are going down with them asap.
my only concern is wether or not we are going to be looking at the same things that seems to be happening in the states? Are we looking at total freezes and "bank holidays" and mashal law.

Come to think of it does our government have the ability to declare marshal law here? Im sure they do but im not 100% sure.

Well it is retarded stupid insane crazy busy in Saskatchewan because of oil & gas exploration. However if the Liberals or NDP have their way WE will be handing OUR wealth to central Canada under a carbon tax scam.

This is wealth that the Atlantic provinces get to keep but WE have to share.

Central Canadians have no clue that most people in Saskatchewan are poor, the highways all need repair, our maps show paved roads but in reality these are pot hole filled cratered wash board gravel trails that haven't been fixed since the NDP held power for 16 years.

Our hospitals are closing, we have a major doctor & nurse shortage, the local police departments require private donations for patrol cars in Estevan.

Too many people in central Canada have all ready planned out where they are going to spend Saskatchewans sudden ability to pull it self out of debt on things like museums and stadiums. Things that Saskatchewan doesn't have or very poor versions of them.

Instead of Central Canadians standing there with their hands out, how about you move to Saskatchewan and get a job.

NOTE: The drilling rigs, cannot get diesel fuel or pipe casing for the holes they are drilling. Something is UP!

P.S. to all you comunist socialist central Canadians, if you pass a carbon tax on Alberta & Saskatchewan, the oil & gas companies will just stop drilling and move to mexico, Egypt, North Africa, Russia, etc.

Then nobody will have any thing.

Only a mentally challenged carbon based lifeform would support a carbon tax, kinda like chickens voting for Kernel/connel sanders of KFC.

Originally posted by Trayen11

So it looks like we here in cannuck land are going to be heading into hard time ourselves as well. I was really hoping that Canada would be able to hold out and remain stable and ride the storm of the US meltdown. But it looks like we are really tide into the US demise.

I think there is going to be an impact around the world, not just in North America. America may be the worst "spend on credit" offenders, but banks, corporations and governments everywhere have been playing the same game, it only differs in degree. Plus we import way more than we export, if we cant spend on credit, that is going to impact the economies of those who export to us too.

Dont let them terrify you. For those of us who grew up dirt poor, (and there are lots of us around the world) this is going to be business as usual. It sucks not to be able to afford the things many consider "necessities" but you would be surprised how much you can do without and still manage.

If you want to be proactive, start cutting off non-essentials now (Cable or satellite TV for example) and build a little nest egg for essentials in case things get really and truly brutal if you dont already have one.

Is this really that big of a surprise? I mean, for the NAU to work, Canada has to be dragged into the quagmire. Pay attention to any push towards the union on the back of economic failure. I promise you, all three NA countries will be better off as soveriegn nations versus a union.

CTV.ca's got a story saying "worse than a recession", actually

www.ctv.ca...

TORONTO -- Economists from Canada's Big Five banks expect little or no growth in the near future, warning Monday that the domestic economy's current gloom will deepen into something worse than a recession.

The word "recession" wouldn't describe the deep structural problems affecting everything from the U.S. housing sector to the Canadian oil industry, said Bank of Nova Scotia chief economist Warren Jestin.

"You have to invent a new word to describe what we're in now," he said after the banks presented their perspectives at the Economic Club.

I knew something was up when suddenly banks and politicians started saying "everything's fine, nothing to worry about," when before they hadn't been saying anything at all.

This is pretty concerning. I have no idea what to expect in the next several months or years and I really want to know if this is something I should and can prepare for.

Canadians must not vote for a gov't to increase taxes of any kind! The gov must lower things to attract foreign investment, the gov must lower taxes so it becomes affordable to manufacture in this country instead of shipping jobs overseas.

No more allowing non skilled immigrants into the country that end up costing the tax payers more money! Not a p.c. thing to say but it is the truth.

Living in Northern BC, we are only now truely feeling the effects of the US depression...( lets call a spade a spade here folks) ...With housing starts at an all time low, communities are sprilling towards ghost town status as the lumber industry collapses.... Looking at recent papers, theres hardly anything but mcjobs to be found as living wage jobs dissapear daily. Saw mills, truckers secondary manufacturers are all shutting down/ dissapearing daily.... Truely a shame too as the pine beetle epidemic ( if you havent heard of it look it up.....an environmental disaster linked to glabal warming ) is killing our forests at an unheard of rate. We have no choice but to harvest as much as possible while we can but with no market it just stands dead, waiting for a match to start a forest fire that is unimaginable....as it stands a huge amount of the forest industry that remains is simply cutting fire guards around our once beatifull forests...
The Bc forests are amoung the largest rain forests in the world and yet we stand by and watch them wither and die...not even able to harvest them because of the housing slump in the usa.............truely a shame.....

This argument about oil dropping on demand concerns is a complete joke, typical mainstream propaganda. Big investors are being forced to sell to cover margin calls all over the place. When the rest of the world finally decides to accept the losses and dump their US financial dollars/assets, oil gold silver etc.. will skyrocket.

But what about this news

www.theglobeandmail.com...

Canada working on trade agreements with the EU ? why would they want to stop accepting US dollars and switch to the next worst currency ? At least there is a mention of trade agreements with China down the line.

Originally posted by BattleofBatoche

P.S. to all you comunist socialist central Canadians, if you pass a carbon tax on Alberta & Saskatchewan, the oil & gas companies will just stop drilling and move to mexico, Egypt, North Africa, Russia, etc.

Then nobody will have any thing.

Only a mentally challenged carbon based lifeform would support a carbon tax, kinda like chickens voting for Kernel/connel sanders of KFC.

Actually I can see AB, SK, and BC just leaving confederation if they decide to go with a carbon tax. There is a pretty serious movement here in Alberta already that is wanting to leave. All it will take is a tipping of the scales.

So far here, things are still rosy. How long that will last is anyone's guess though. Still too many jobs for too few people. Jobs at Mc D's and Timmy Hoho's paying $12-15/hour. Housing prices have stabilized but are still up there and unless something drastic happens, like China decides it doesn't need oil anymore, we should be in decent shape.

One of the problems I have had with the economic policies of not just the US but the corporate world is that it is based in part upon "bicycle theory."

www.trilateral.org...

The following remarks were made by C. Fred Bergsten to the 2000 annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Tokyo. C. Fred Bergsten is Director of the Institute for International Economics and a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs.

The situation is very serious if, like me, you believe in the bicycle theory, which says you either move forward or you fall over.

One of the problems I saw with that as a business student at the time was there was no account being taken of the direction in which the bicycle was traveling. For instance, if your bicycle is headed for a cliff, might it not be better to fall over than continue forward?

From this same speech by Mr. Bergsten; (about economic globalization)

A second part of the response has to be an honest recognition and admission that there are costs and losers. For too long, those of us on the pro-globalization side tried to ignore and deny this fact—but it clearly must be accepted and admitted.

If you read the entirety of Mr Bergstens speech, you will see his clear optimism about the direction globalization is taking us. Even when he acknowledges that the previous attempt, around the turn of the last century, ended in a great Depression. He does not think globalization itself has anything to do with it, he attributes it to other causes.

However, just use logic and consider both the statement above that there will be "costs and losers" and then the much bandied about "fact" (I cannot find the actual data to give a real opinion of the "facticity" of this) that it would take several Earths worth of resources for everyone on the planet to have the western lifestyle. If more people are joining us in consumerism, we are of necessity going to be some of those "losers" as we will have to scale down while they scale up.

I am not saying that we should lock out other countries from having a better standard of living, but what I am saying is that a contraction of our own first world standard of living is, and logically must be, a necessity in a globalized economy. I would argue that our economic situation is a result of our leaders either refusing to see this simple logic (possible they can be rather foolish) or a dishonest denial of it to gain complicity for globalization. (Which is what the body of that speech is about)

I tend to favor high level incompetence over high level evil genius. Look at the argument of Mr. Bergsten in this speech. He seems convinced that everything is fine with the US econonmy, and that the reaction of the people in rejection to globalization in the US illogical. He does recognize that some will be "losers" but he doesnt elaborate on who this will be.

It may be that he simply doesnt care to know who the "losers" will be. It doesnt matter to a multi-national corporation who consumes their products as long as someone does. But it does matter to the people of a particular country.

I have long argued that is the inherent problem with letting corporations, and in particular multi-national corporations set a county's economic agenda. What is good for them and what is good for the people of that country are not the same things.