Economists Cautiously Optimistic
Prince George, B.C. – B.C.’s GDP growth is expected to be slightly above the Canadian average next year.
Most of the members of the B.C. Economic Forecast Council predict that, on average, B.C.’s real GDP will, be about 2.1%, this year, down from the 2.2% forecast at the beginning of this year.
The council also projects B.C. real GDP will grow 2.2 per cent in 2013, 2.6 per cent in 2014 and average 2.6 per cent for 2015-17. The council has lowered its growth projections for the province this year and next in light of ongoing weakness in the global economy.
The 14 member Economic Forecast Council includes some of the most respected independent economic forecasters in Canada. The Council provides economic advice to the Minister of Finance in developing each year’s budget and fiscal plan. Council members are surveyed twice a year, once in the fall and then again the following January.
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So, can we find any economists who are recklessly pessimistic?
It would be nice to hear another point of view. ;-)
Just wait a little while – 90% of the people on this board will chime in with their NDP nay saying recklessy pessimistic view.
What is needed are “one armed economists”. So they can’t say, “On the one hand you got this and on the other hand you….uh, er, never mind.
The ski is falling:)
I haven’t heard any discussion by the economists about the tidal wave of debt that is engulfing this country.
The following information is from a Statistics Canada credit market summary data table as of the end of June 2012: (The debt statistics for Canada up to the end of September 2012 will be released in about 4 weeks by Statistics Canada).
Total debt in Canada as of the end of June 2012 (bottom line of the data table) was 5.1 Trillion $
From the end of June 2011 to the end of June 2012 the total debt in Canada increased by 209 Billion $.
For that 12 month period the total debt in Canada increased at a rate of 572 Million $ per day.
I would have to agree with Karl Denninger when he said (a few years ago) “You cannot expand credit at a rate faster than GDP forever without suffering a financial panic and collapse”.
http://www5.statcan.gc.ca/cansim/pick-choisir?lang=eng&p2=33&id=3780122
Ontario debt, $245 billion..Alberta debt..$20 billion..BC Debt..$70 billion..
Canada debt(excluding Provincial debt)..
$700 billion..
Canada being 1/10 the US population..
Times the debt by 10..
Canada`s debt problem really is as bad as the US debt.
Flaherty 2 days ago stated..”We won`t balance the budget until 2016-2017″
And today, 2 days later Stephen Harper claims the budget “will be balanced before the next election”
Mike De Jong stated today..
“BC is on target to have the budget balanced by February”..
Oh, one more thing Mike De Jong stated today on cknw radio…
“I like the way they get things done in China, no red tape” snip..
Didn`t Kevin Falcon say the same thing 3 years ago..
You know, that pesky democracy keeps getting in the way.
Yes, Harper and De Jong will both claim balanced budgets before the next elections, neither will be telling the truth.
Crim failed out of Economics 101 by the looks of it.
Reminds me of the story of Henny Penny, cocky locky and Turkey lurkey. Have fun with that!
Criminalmind. I agree with your statement that the debt problem in Canada is just as bad as the debt problem in the United States. The gdp and the population of the USA is approximately 10 times greater than that of Canada.
As per the link I gave in my above post as of the end of June 2012 the total debt in Canada is approximately 5.1 Trillion $.
According to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the United States Federal Reserve the total credit market debt owed in the USA as of the end of June 2012 is approximately 55 Trillion $
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/TCMDO
http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/current/z1r-4.pdf
If you paid off the National Debt what would you then use for ‘money’? For in paying any amount of that Debt you are sending an equal amount of ‘money’ to its extinction. As with ANY other debt that is repaid. Only particularly in the case of a National Debt leaving in its wake an enormous volume of ‘price values’ of goods for sale, and services that could be provided, if only someone HAD the money to pay for them. They don’t, and won’t, unless there is some MORE money ‘borrowed’. What is created “out of nothing”, as the saying goes, when any bank loan is made, returns to “nothing” when that loan is repaid. It is a CREDITARY concept, and one, it would seem, surprisingly few people, (including, especially, most economists, unfortunately), understand. Which goes some ways to explain why their ‘predictions’ are seldom as accurate as those made by the weatherman. And even more meaningless and misleading.
The “debt problem” in Canada and the United States, and elsewhere, only becomes a problem when the ability to repay WHEN DUE is actually impaired. This has not happened, yet, physically, because in both nations our actual capacity to PRODUCE still far exceeds our actual need, or desire, to CONSUME. It COULD happen if we continue to lose our manufacturing capacity through outsourcing industries to “Third
world” sweatshop countries who supposedly can produce ‘cheaper’ than we can.
“in both nations our actual capacity to PRODUCE still far exceeds our actual need, or desire, to CONSUME.”
The physical capacity to produce may exist. The problem, however, is that the incentive to pay for the domestic production does not exist as long as foreign producers will sell for less than domestic producers. There is very little loyalty to national producers.
Then why, gus, do we not move to make it possible for the ‘incentive’ to exist?
That is not a particularly difficult thing to do. We don’t have to shut our borders to trade with the rest of the world to do it. Nor do we have to subsidise our ‘producers’, both overtly and covertly, as governments here and elsewhere are wont to do. Often at the greater expense of domestic consumers, through things like the HST.
We don’t have to violate any of the terms of any of the so-called ‘free trade’ agreements we’ve made with other countries, or nationalise any industries, or violate any of the international investment agreements we’re hurriedly negotiating with China and Europe, etc., in our frantic quest for more ‘jobs’. At any cost, it sometimes seems.
We simply have to make a few ongoing ‘macro-economic’ accounting adjustments to the way that the system of cost accountancy used by every individual business that provides us with goods and services relates to the economy as a whole, and to the ‘unit of account’ ~ the ‘money’~ it uses. Changes that would allow our financial system to actually accurately REFLECT the physical realities of overall national Production and Consumption in the price WE pay for those goods and services. Something it currently does not, and increasingly can not, currently do.
It might be noted that the type of macro-economic changes I’m referring to have been applied ‘in reverse’ (for a the primary purposes of building up “the State”, rather than directly increasing the access to production of the consumer/citizens within it), by both Japan and Communist China, and are still being applied by both.
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