Orderly Housing Correction Continues There are many unusual aspects to the current housing correction, but fundamentally the most noteworthy is how orderly and non-chaotic it has been. Home sales have slowed, but so have new listings, so the price declines are more muted than we might have expected. This is not a housing collapse. It […]

Inflation Cooled Again in August, But Higher Rates Still Coming Canada’s headline inflation rate cooled again in August, even a bit more than expected. The consumer price index rose 7.0% from a year ago, down from 7.6% in July and a forty-year high of 8.1% in June, mainly on the back of lower gasoline prices. […]

Housing Softens Again in August The full effects of the most recent rate hikes have not yet manifested. Statistics released today by the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) show that the slowdown that began in March in response to higher interest rates continued in August, albeit at a slower pace. Home sales recorded over Canadian MLS® […]

The Bank of Canada Hiked Rates Again And Isn’t Finished Yet The Governing Council of the Bank of Canada raised its target for the overnight policy rate by 75 basis points today to 3.25% and signalled that the policy rate would rise further. The Bank is also continuing its policy of quantitative tightening (QT), reducing its […]

Macklem’s Op-Ed (emphasis is mine) National Post Comment, August 16, 2022 Inflation in Canada has come down a little, but it remains far too high. After rising rapidly to reach 8.1 per cent in June, inflation as measured by the consumer price index (CPI) was 7.6 per cent in July. The good news is that […]

    Gasoline Prices Dipped, But No Time To Celebrate While we are all grateful that gasoline prices declined from record highs in July, today’s release of the July inflation data shows that the underlying inflation momentum remains too strong for comfort. Governor Macklem will likely continue to hike the policy rate aggressively when they […]

Finally, Some Good News on the Inflation Front It was widely expected that US consumer price inflation would decelerate in July, reflecting the decline in energy prices that peaked in early June. The US CPI was unchanged last month following its 1.3% spike in June. This reduced the year-over-year inflation rate to 8.5% from a […]