Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for October 25th, 2007

What is a Fiscal Statement?

So the Conservatives couldn’t goad the Liberals into forcing an election with their throne speech so now they will have a “Fiscal Statement” that may do this. What is in this for me? Glad you asked:

• A possible GST cut of another 1%, which is ok by me, anything that lowers that tax makes me happy.
• A $700 middle income tax cut? Canadian Capitalist thinks this is a drop in the middle income rate, which might be a good guess.
• Lowering corporate tax rate.

All of these are a good thing. I think the Tories sense the outrage of the public that the government is running $14B surpluses (and this years is already looking to be bigger than last year), so this has to be damage control on their part. They will blame the Liberals for it, but given they have been in power for a year, that doesn’t really wash any more either.

Stay tuned this should be an interesting month or two. How ’bout a January election?

Your Pension (if you have one) is Healthier

That is what Watson Wyatt Worldwide says about the Canadian pension funds. They haven’t been this healthy since 2002, which is good to hear.

Burke added: “The typical plan has now developed a small cushion against future adverse experience. Given improved funding ratios and the recent market conditions, some sponsors will now find it more palatable to move to a more conservative investment strategy.”

Good to hear that if I get to retire, at least one of my pensions might be in place, and alive.

That is a BIG Write Off

Merrill Lynch in the states is reporting $7.9Billion of losses in “…on collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), which are complex debt securities, and junk mortgages…”, so they are paying the price for below prime mortgages as well! Holy cow, and this is a financial house reporting this kind of loss. Wow.