Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Random Thoughts

Friday, February 1st, 2008

A quieter week had some interesting news but February starts quieter than January did.

We found out yesterday that the Canadian Federal government is only $508 in the red thanks to it paying down the debt with the surpluses they have had for the past 10 years. Only 65 more years and we should have that whole things paid off.
The Canadian GDP is up 0.1% month over month in November as well, in al industries, another sign that the Canadian economy is strong(er) than it’s American cousins.
After finding out that the TD web site actually has an RSS feed that updates and tells you what their interest rates are, I noticed another interesting thing. The page with the credit card account interest rates has not been updated in over 6 months (May 14 2007)? Interest rates have dropped across the board, yet their credit card rate remains at it’s normal “loan shark like” rates. Interesting.
Microsoft is offering to buy Yahoo for about $45 Billion dollars? (MSFT, YHOO) Well, if you can’t beat them, buy them is not a bad idea. Anyone who wants to spend $10 Million they can buy this web site too! Google’s profits are down (GOOG) as well, if you care about such things.
I continue to procrastinate about getting Tax software, but was interested to see that Intuit responded to the Canadian Capitalist’s less than glowing review of their software package. Good for them, read what the common folk say and learn from it!
In Ottawa there is a new door to door scam involving testing your city water and then saying it is full of human excrement and then attempting to sell you a filtration system. Gotta love it when the “flim flam” industry comes up with a new scam.