"History, real solemn history, I cannot be interested in.... I read it a little as a duty; but it tells me nothing that does not either vex or weary me. The quarrels of popes and kings, with wars and pestilences in every page; the men all so good for nothing, and hardly any women at all - it is very tiresome." Jane Austen spoken by Catherine Morland in 'Northanger Abbey'
 Perceived economic safe-havens. NOT British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned (in 1998 and again in 2011) that the Euro crisis is "a burning building with no exits".
"It was folly to create this system, it will be written about for centuries as a kind of historical monument to collective folly. But it’s there and we have to deal with it." Daily Mail News article here from September 30, 2011. Apart from the Euro Headlines that are buffeting the financial markets every week, many Eurone Zone members are in bubble territory when it comes to their local real estate markets. To quote Jesse Colombo (thebubblebubble.com): "Could Sweden or Finland be the scene of the next European financial crisis? It is actually far likelier than most people realize. While the world has been laser- focused on the woes of the heavily-indebted PIIGS nations for the last couple of years, property markets in Northern and Western European countries have been bubbling up to dizzying new heights in a repeat performance of the very property bubbles that caused the global financial crisis in the first place. Nordic and Western European countries such as Norway and Switzerland have attracted strong investment inflows due to their perceived economic safe-haven statuses (Think Canada - BR), serving to further inflate these countries’ preexisting property bubbles that had expanded from the mid-1990s until 2008. With their overheating economies and ballooning property bubbles, today’s safe-haven European countries may very well be tomorrow’s Greeces and Italys." READ THE REST OF ANALYSIS HERE.  Canada Unemployment (7.6%) January 2012 Unemployment in Canada ticked up in January 2012 to 7.6%. The near term low was in Q1-2008 when the rate dipped below 6%.
Employment increased in educational services; information, culture and recreation; and in "other services", such as personal and household services. There were declines, however, in professional, scientific and technical services; and in finance, insurance, real estate and leasing.  Canada is counter cyclical to the trend. Canadians are bucking the trend set in other developed nations where real estate peaked and participants subsequently turned to repairing their balance sheets.
In Canada, savings rates are falling again as personal debt levels keep growing. At some point, that will change despite the Federal Government policy low Treasury yields. When real estate flipping no longer produces a capital gain, owners will shift their priority away from spending to saving, including the forced saving plan known as a mortgage. Look out. When spending drops, unemployment rises. |
History, Charts & Curated Readings"Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement; and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." George Santayana Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense Archives
December 2019
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