Wednesday, November 24, 2010

China & Russia Quit US Dollar

China, Russia Quit Dollar
St. Petersburg, Russia - China and Russia have decided to renounce the US dollar and resort to using their own currencies for bilateral trade, Premier Wen Jiabao and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin announced late on Tuesday. Chinese experts said the move reflected closer relations between Beijing and Moscow and is not aimed at challenging the dollar, but to protect their domestic economies."About trade settlement, we have decided to use our own currencies," Putin said at a joint news conference with Wen in St. Petersburg.

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Chinese Professor 2030

Dean Baker: Canada's Housing Bubble

Housing bubble a danger: expert
One of the first economists to predict the U.S. mortgage crisis warned Wednesday that Canada's housing sector could be headed for a sharp correction. Dean Baker of the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research said he sees no reason why average home prices in Canada should be about 50 per cent higher than in the U.S. Baker said if interest rates rise by two per cent, Canadians could see house prices collapse by 25 to 30 per cent.

Vancouver Taxpayers Stuck...

Vancouver Taxpayers Stuck...
Vancouver taxpayers are on the hook for millions of dollars a month in interest payments for the troubled Olympic village project, and there are no plans to start selling the empty condos again until next year. Expenses for building maintenance and security and other costs are adding as much as $1.5 million a month to the multimillion-dollar interest payments. Moreover, the court-appointed receiver Ernst & Young has the power to borrow as much as $7.5 million to carry out its job. The figures emerged this week as part of the backdrop for the city's extraordinary demand to put Millennium Southeast False Creek Properties into a "negotiated receivership" over the $740 million it owed for two taxpayer-funded loans

Monday, November 8, 2010

Wolfgang Schäuble : Q2 Stimulus is "Clueless"

Clueless' – The German Verdict
They have already pumped endless amounts of money into the economy with extremely high budget deficits, and with a monetary policy which has already pumped in lots of money," Mr Schäuble said. "The results have been hopeless. With all due respect, [the] US policy is clueless."

Q2 - 600 Billion

Stock Markets Surge on Fed's $600B Plan
Stocks surged today after Wednesday's announcement that the Federal Reserve will purchase $600 billion worth of Treasury securities to boost the stagnant economy.

BMO: No Canadian Housing Bubble

Canada’s Housing Market ‘Pricey, Not Dicey,’
Canada's housing market is moderately overvalued but not a bubble waiting to be burst, BMO Nesbitt Burns says. “All things considered, the Canadian housing market does not appear to be in a bubble, and is unlikely to suffer a U.S.-style collapse,” economists Earl Sweet and Sal Guatieri said in a research note. “A key and overriding difference is the quality of loan origination in the past decade, as well as other institutional factors such as mortgage insurance and recourse against defaulters,” they wrote in the report titled “Canadian housing: Pricey, not dicey.”

Canadian Mortgage Debt Tops $1 Trillion

Canadian Mortgage Debt Tops $1 Trillion
Canadians are holding more than $1 trillion worth of mortgage debt, the first time the total has passed that level, and a 7.6 per cent increase over the past year.The gain in the country's total residential mortgage debt is in keeping with the 7.5 per cent average seen over the past fifteen years, the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage Professionals (CAAMP) said in its annual report Monday. Over that time, Canadians total mortgage debt has increased by 194 per cent.