Category: Economy

The strange tale of a local council gouging its near-bankrupt major employer

I find this an amazing story: Local politicians want to remain popular with their rapidly growing population of increasingly wealthier voters and so rather than ding them for all the new municipal services these voters want and need, the local council ratchets up the tax bill on the municipalities single biggest employer the local paper mill. Meanwhile, the paper mill’s owner is scrambling to avoid bankruptcy. It asks the municipality for relief. It gets just that. A little relief. But not nearly enough.

Frantic to cut costs — Continue reading The strange tale of a local council gouging its near-bankrupt major employer

New 'green group' poll: Foreign oil patch money a bigger concern than foreign money in green groups

For the last month or so, there has been increasing attention (partly, I’d like to think based on some of the reporting our organization has done on the issue) of the influence foreign, mostly U.S., organization have had on what could broadly be termed the Canadian environmental lobby. This PR war is now heating to a fever pitch as the three-member independent review panel gets set to start hearings tomorrow into a proposal to build a $5.5 billion 1,177-kilometre from the Alberta oilsands to a port on the northern B.C. coast, from where supertankers would take Alberta bitumen to markets in Asia and the U.S.

Today, the green groups started firing back, Continue reading New 'green group' poll: Foreign oil patch money a bigger concern than foreign money in green groups

Another knock on the greenback?: Tokyo and Beijing Agree on Currency Pact

The Wall Street Journal reports:

… during a visit to China by Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, which ended on Monday, China and Japan announced a series of deals that promote the use of the yuan in trade and investment between the world’s second- and third-largest economies, which would limit somewhat the use of the dollar in Asia, the world’s fastest growing region. Specifically, the two countries agreed to promote direct yuan-yen trade, rather than converting their currencies first to dollars, and also for Japan to hold yuan in its foreign-exchange reserves, which are now largely denominated in dollars.

Japan “seems to be acknowledging implicitly that there will be a single dominant Asian currency in the future and it won’t be the yen,” said Barry Eichengreen, a University of California at Berkeley economic historian. Harvard University economist Jeffrey Frankel said that “this hastens a multicurrency world, but this is just one of 100 steps along the way.”

[Read the whole piece: Tokyo and Beijing Agree on Currency Pact – WSJ.com.

Frances Woolley: Books for budding economists

Very witty, from Carleton University economist Frances Woolley:

What books should you give your children (nieces, nephews, friends) if you want them to grow up to become economists?

Harry Potter’s magical universe is a Thatcherite’s nightmare with its protectionist restrictions against magic carpet imports and bloated public sector. With a tri-metalic (gold/silver/bronze) currency and no paper money, effective monetary policy is impossible. The economic fundamentals of the wizarding world are basically unsound.

What about some of the classic children’s literature?

Read the rest at: Worthwhile Canadian Initiative: Books for budding economists.

FT: IMF chief warns over 1930s-style threats

Meanwhile in Europe…

The managing director of the International Monetary Fund has warned that the global economy faces the prospect of “economic retraction, rising protectionism, isolation and . . . what happened in the 30s [Depression]”, as European tensions again flared over suggestions in Paris that the UK’s credit rating should be downgraded before France’s.

[Read the rest: IMF chief warns over 1930s-style threats – FT.com.]