Economy News

CTV News Staff

Canadians continue to pay significantly more for consumer goods than Americans, despite a high-flying loonie that is expected to float higher than the greenback for months to come.

A new analysis by a Bank of Montreal economist predicts that the Canadian dollar will remain above par until at least the end of 2012, if not longer.

The BMO report authored by Douglas Porter says "Canadians should get accustomed to a lofty loonie," which will restrain inflation and dampen the prices of imported goods.

But the climbing currency has yet to close a price gap with the United States, which may leave Canadians scratching their heads as to why they have to pay more for the same consumer items.

full article http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20110414/loonie-prices-bmo-110414/

Ireland has formally applied for a rescue package worth more than $100 billion, after months of trying to survive its financial crisis with austerity measures and strict budgetary planning.
 

by John Kozy

Global Research, September 29, 2010

The Western commercial system exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit and has never been to improve the human condition but to exploit it. When governments institutionalize this system, they place their nations on suicidal paths, because as Jefferson recognized, "Merchants have no country." It is not terrorism that threatens the security of the Western World, it is the Western World's commercial system.

CTV.ca News

Canada's international trade deficit spiked unexpectedly as exports to the U.S. dropped, a side effect of the country's dependence on the struggling American economy.

The country's trade deficit jumped to $2.7 billion in July from $1.8 billion in June, Statistics Canada reported Thursday.

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (B.C.) is having a big party.  Guess who they're having to speak about the state of Canada, now?

U.S. regulators accused Wall Street’s premier firm of committing fraud during the U.S. mortgage boom, marking a pivotal moment in the effort to uncover wrongdoing in the worst financial crisis in decades.

AMI – Monetary Reform and Liberation
G-20 - Debt Slavery

In Pittsburgh the G-20 agreed to disagree, thus maintaining the illusion that they have secured the unraveling financial system by instituting the mildest of reforms even while allowing the bankers most responsible for the economic disaster to keep their ill-gotten gains. Simultaneously, in Chicago a less heralded group gathered at the American Monetary Institute (AMI) 5th Annual Monetary Reform Conference to deepen their understanding of the flaws in the dominant debt-based system and the possibilities for transformation. At the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, protected by brutal military and police forces, world leaders were met by thousands of protesters deploring their policies. At the AMI meeting at Roosevelt University in Chicago, monetary researchers, authors, and activists from Russia, New Zealand, Europe, Africa, Canada, Britain, and across the US were ignored by the press as they shared their insights and experiences and discussed the Monetary Reform and Financial Security bill, to be introduced into Congress by Dennis Kucinich as a first step to ease the debt slavery burdening humanity.

The AMI was founded by Stephen Zarlenga (& Dr. Lucienne DeWulf). Zarlenga, author of The Lost Science of Money: The Mythology of Money, the Story of Power, contends that

“By mis-defining the nature of money, special interests have often been able to control a society’s monetary system, and in turn, the society itself.”

What's this?  A falling out on the right?  Perhaps to compensate for the discord among the federal Liberals....?

U.S. lawmakers launch push to repeal NAFTA

   Doug Palmer, WASHINGTON
   Thu Mar 4, 2010 4:35pm EST

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A small group of U.S. lawmakers unveiled legislation
on Thursday to withdraw from the North American Free Trade Agreement in the
latest sign of congressional disillusionment with free-trade deals.

The bill spearheaded by Rep. Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat, would
require President Barack Obama to give Mexico and Canada six months notice
that the United States will no longer be part of the 16-year-old trade
pact.

Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.

Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed.

A reluctance to spend MAY be a legacy of the recession??

Even as evidence mounts that the Great Recession has finally released its chokehold on the American economy, experts worry that the recovery may be weak, stymied by consumers’ reluctance to spend.

Energy expert and former CIBC economist Jeff Rubin says global economy will get the "shock of its life" within 12 months of the end of the recession when oil prices hit triple digits and the age of globalization starts to come to an end.

The reason Free Traders and Free Marketeers rage against so-called "Protectionism" is because it regulates and contains their excesses and provides real justice for smaller and weaker economies.

Tentative Deal for G.M.’s Opel Is Latest Shift for Industry