Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Bank of Canada, today announced no changes in their overnight rates, which stands to reason. The exact reason given was:

OTTAWA - The Bank of Canada today announced that it is maintaining its target for the overnight rate at 3 per cent. The operating band for the overnight rate is unchanged, and the Bank Rate remains at 3 1/4 per cent.

The three global developments highlighted in the July Monetary Policy Report Update continue to have a major influence on the Canadian economy. Two of them - the course of the U.S. economy and the ongoing turbulence in global financial markets - have evolved broadly in line with the Bank’s expectations. However, there is an increased risk of a more pronounced interplay between weakness in the U.S. economy and tightness in credit conditions that could affect the U.S. outlook for 2009.

Good to know my debt payments aren’t going up in the near future.
 

Gas Prices

An analyst yesterday predicted Gasoline prices in Canada hovering near $1.00 per liter by Christmas, this would make for a very interesting change of events. Would other prices drop? Would deflation kick in? I doubt it, everyone will simply build that into their profit margins again, but still, not having to spend $160 to pick up my daughter from Waterloo would be nice.

Try Chrome

Yes, I am a google Chrome convert as well. I am writing this post using Chrome, it seems to work just fine and runs relatively quickly as well. Haven’t tried all of it’s bells or whistles, but I like it and it does not seem to be as big a PIG for memory as Firefox.

Carnivals

My article Sunday Thought: Debt is Bad in the Bible Too? posted at Canadian Personal Finance Blog was mentioned at Just Another Day of Catholic Pondering in the Catholic Carnival #188: Journey of Faith

Consumer Price Index at 3.4% for July

All I can say is “Uh Oh”, with the CPI numbers for July
being released by Stats Canada.

July saw the highest 12-month increase since March 2003. A climb in gasoline prices was the primary source of higher consumer prices in July. The 12-month variation in the Consumer Price Index (CPI) and the gasoline price index have been increasing at a faster pace over the past four months.

Inflation without gas prices included in it, is at 2.1%, which isn’t as bad, but it is still startling to see these numbers jumping up like this.

On Going Consumer Price Index Graph

This means other prices are going up but not as dramatically, but this is very worrying and I wonder what the Bank of Canada may do about this? Gas prices seem to have plateau’ed for now, but what is going to happen this fall?

More information after the BIG table

Leading Indicators Remain Flat

The composite leading indicators remained unchanged for another month, for July. This is the second straight month this is happening, but the actual results are quite mixed. The Housing Index seems to be the biggest drop and is the heaviest anchor keeping the index from rising (which is a good thing, I think), and New Orders in manufacturing is up too (i.e. people or companies are buying more).

Humor: And You Can’t Even Rely On Teenage Sex Either!

Yup Stats Canada put out a study that says that Teenage sex in Canada is on the Decline.

In 2005, 43% of teens aged 15 to 19 reported that they had had sexual intercourse at least once, down from 47% in 1996/1997.

The decline was due to young women, among whom the proportion who reported having had sexual intercourse fell from 51% to 43%. The proportion of young men who had had intercourse remained unchanged at 43%.

After doing the simple math in my house, I am going to go ground 2 of my three daughters!!!

Gas price hikes are now starting to sift through the system, and the price hikes are starting to show their affects on Inflation.

To quote our friends at Stats Canada:

Gasoline prices increased 26.9% between June 2007 and June 2008, significantly higher than the 15.0% advance posted in May. June’s increase was the largest since the 34.7% gain reported for September 2005, when hurricanes Katrina and Rita disrupted the oil market.June’s increase reflected both recent increases in pump prices, as well as the fact that gasoline prices had been on the decline in June 2007.The Bank of Canada’s core index, which is used to monitor the inflation control target, rose 1.5% in June 2008 compared with the same month of the previous year, the same rate of increase posted in May.On a month-to-month basis, the seasonally-adjusted all-items index rose 0.8% between May and June 2008, while the seasonally-adjusted core index increased 0.3%. The seasonally-adjusted all-items index increased 0.7% and the core index edged up 0.1% between April and May

So Core prices aren’t actually increasing as fast as Gasoline (27% year over year, wow, now that is a jump), so that is kind of cool, but the fact that Inflation now stands at 3.1% year over year, may mean some changes in Fiscal Policy down at the Bank of Canada too.