Economy contracted slightly in August as gross domestic product fell 0.1 per cent, following flat reading in July, but economists still believe recession over.
Why should anyone listen to these moronic 'economists' when they didn't even see it coming. Some time in future they will all claim that they never saw the housing bust coming.
Two very sobering releases from Stats Can- the Payroll report and the GDP report.
The GDP number takes us back all the way to the fall of 2005 with a total output of around $1170 billion or so. So much for 4 years of growth and the new era of prosperity brought in by the dirty oil and natural gas speculators. The growth is occurring in the same sectors-construction and public sector. One paid by tax payers now and for the other the bill will be coming pretty soon in the form of tax payer supported bailouts.
Too bad, Canada didn't spend anything on stimulus plan. Oops...they did spend around $50 billion, but that wasn't enough to still get us out of recession. Next on agenda-more spending backed by the strength of the Canadian tax payers.
The payroll report is even more sobering -guess why nobody in mainstream media talked about it. More than 110,000 non farm payroll jobs lost in August. If you look at the payroll graphs you'll see that the employment numbers are back to 2007 levels only. But the GDP is back to 2005 levels. So the economy will most likely shed more jobs to produce the same extent of output and maintain similar level of productivity. Or may be most of the employment was generated by the public sector requiring no productivity.
This is all happening when the commodities have not been routed at all-they have merely come down a bit from their all time high prices. What will Canada and Alberta be like, when the commodities do enter their secular bear market? Is there a plan B here, other than continually expanding the balance sheet of CMHC?
Have a good weekend everyone.
