Canadian Dollars Blog

Here's a pretty decent article on what's going on with the market . Unlike this post, the article is a little on the medium-long side, but very insightful. The sell-off came as Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke called on Congress to pass, as soon as possible, an economic stimulus package that would include a tax rebate and possible tax breaks for new investments. The White House indicated it supported a stimulus package as well, but one worry was that disputes over whether to make the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent could derail the process. I encourage everyone to give it a good read. Thanks again for reading the Canadian Dollars Blog.

There is an article over at Barron 's in which the author feels that Canada's dollar is way overpriced and that forex traders should seriously consider shorting the loonie. I'm very skeptical of this move. Canada is fiscally sound and is currently in the middle of a resource boom. These two things are major reasons why I wouldn't be against our strong loonie any time soon. That being said, our economy is very much tied to the US economy. As a result, should a recession strike south of the border, we will definitely feel more than just the aftershocks. This will probably be my last post for 2007. I want to take this opportunity to thank all my readers for sticking with me and reading my posts. It's really appreciated. Hopefully 2007 was a great year for you guys. Let's hope that 2008 will be even more prosperous!

My parents are visiting in town for the week so I probably won't be posting much more in the next couple of days. I'll try to sneak in a few posts when I have some spare time. Anyway, while they were in town we dropped by a very popular mall in the morning. Sounds like a pretty boring post so far right? Well, guess what? The mall wasn't nearly as busy as it was in previous year's Boxing Days. This leads me to believe that there is a serious drop in consumer spending. If you think things are bad in Canada, things are even worse in the USA. I watched NBC news this evening and they talked about how empty the malls are. I can't replay footage of NBC news on here, but picture this. A camera panning left and right in a normally busy mall in suburban USA. The mall is empty. The J Crew on the left and the GAP on the right are virtually empty. It's a ghost town here folks! I know that Americans don't celebrate Boxing Day, but in the past they are known to ...

Why does the government help people out of their credit problems? Essentially you do something stupid like overextend yourself, and the government bails you out. Stocks ticked higher on this news. Wanna know why I like this news? Read on... The people and companies who got themselves in the rut in the first place, now have no consequences (or less) for their actions and in due time they will repeat the same mistakes (maybe not to the same degree, but they will). Stocks that got battered on credit worries are turning around (as seen today). What does this all mean? Well, for one puts on stocks that should be kissing the ground are cheaper even cheaper now. Some new problem gets uncovered which is not covered (yeah I know bad pun...) by the recent government actions and then financials will get screwed again.

The Wealthy Boomer has an excellent article about why he thinks the whole USA demise thing has been blown way out of proportion.  Have a read.  He makes some very excellent points in the article! :)

The Canadian Government today unveiled that in the first 6 months of 2007, they collected a surplus of 9.3 billion dollars. Sure this sounds like a lot, but how much is 9.3 billion dollars? If you spread it across the entire population est (33 million people), it works out to a surplus of $281 a person. This is hardly a large number at all. Just keep that in mind when you're looking at stats.

In 2006, there are stats that show that the average Canadian has about 29,000 in non-mortgage debt. Wow that is a lot of debt to have. I'm just happy that aside from my credit card bills (which I pay off monthly anyway) I only have mortgage debt. Astounding.

Wow the Canadian dollar has been on a tear lately. Right now the Canadian dollar is trading at 1.104 against the USD. This is thanks to China diversifying it's foreign reserves sending international currencies higher against the USD. The move comes after the major surge yesterday in the Canadian dollar after the Bank of Canada did not signal that they would be cutting interest rates anytime soon. With oil approaching almost $100 a barrel and gold prices rushing to new highs, could this be the early stages of an economic slowdown?