Canadian Personal Finance Blog

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.

Yes, Stats Canada asks the interesting question, “Is it possible to have the rate of folks employed stay the same, but the rate of unemployed folks increase?“, the answer this month is “Yes”. How? Read the article to get that explained to you.

For me there was some good news:

Employment continued to grow in professional, scientific and technical services in June (+37,000). From a year ago, employment in the industry has grown by 7.5%, an increase of 86,000 workers. The biggest contributors to this year-over-year increase have been computer design services and legal services.

Which makes an old hacker like me feel a little better these days. Unemployment now sits at 6.2% up 0.1 over last month’s figures.

The one really interesting point made was the following:

Since June 2007, average hourly wages have risen by 4.4% to $21.15. This rate of growth is double that of the most recent increase in the Consumer Price Index (+2.2%).

Wages are out stripping CPI? So how are the employers going to deal with this? Increasing prices? This is how things started in the 70’s if I remember correctly. Stay tuned, but it should be interesting to see what big Union contracts come up and what settlements come of that as well.

Have a great weekend folks.

BCE Sale On The Rails Again?

On Friday the news broke that the purchasers in the BCE deal have finalized things and the sale should be going through, causing the stock to jump $4 per share. As a share holder I was very glad to see that, however, it seems the Dividends that I am owed for the past while, are not going to materialize, as this money is being used as part of the deal, which does not make me as happy.

I bought BCE initially, because I had no idea what to buy and figured, BCE was a good “Blue Chip” stock to buy. I later realized that the Dividends that it pays makes it an attractive stock as well (proof that the Sun shines on even an Ugly Dog’s butt every once in a while).

My guess is the BCE sale should go through, however, I don’t think that this is quite done yet either, in terms of twists and turns in the story either.

More Women in Pensions

Another interesting study from our friends at Stats Canada about Pension Plans in Canada points out that as of January 1, 2007, more of us are in Registered Pension Plans. The interesting point is that the Percentage of employees that were in a Pension plan actually dropped from 2005 to 2006 even though the total number of folks in Pension Plans actually increased.

More interestingly this increase in the raw number was seen mostly from Women joining pension plans. The percentage of women are:

Of the 5.8 million total membership, women accounted for 2.8 million, or 48.5%, while men accounted for 3.0 million, or 51.5%. In 2000, women accounted for 45.1%, and men, 54.9%

Increases for women were shared between the public and private sectors.

The number of Defined Benefit Pensions that are still under-funded is mentioned as well, and it is still a worrisome area for folks who have them (or who have been recently chucked out of them like me), however the number of Pension plans that are underfunded did decrease in 2006 from 2005 from 57% in 2005 to 45% in 2006. This is still not a good thing since 45% of the funds are unable to meet their obligations at this moment.

TD Hurt by “Rogue” Trader

Thanks to former TD employee Simon Richard Brignall, TD stocks are going to take a hit, because the company has to write off $96M in losses thanks to more “creative accounting” being done by some insiders.

During this period, Mr Brignall mismarked positions on his trading book and entered fictitious trades. This conduct, when considered by reference to the FSA’s prescribed regulatory standards for individuals, is such that it appears to the FSA that he is not a fit and proper person to perform any function in relation to any regulated activity carried on by any authorised or exempt person or exempt professional firm.

Sounds like he made a few mistakes, seems the FSA (Financial Services Authority) doesn’t think he should be doing this job, as a TD stock holder, I think I agree. Who hired this guy? Not sure they should be allowed to do that job either (In My Most Humblest of Opinions). Who was supposed to watch and make sure this guy wasn’t doing this? Not sure they should be keeping their job either.

Mr. Brignall does not appear to be the only cause of this loss, but allegedly has a great deal to do with it.

That is what Stats Canada says, which is not surprising, but the fact that it was only 2.2% amazes me a little. In 2006 the CPI was 2.0% so this is not a large jump in the CPI year over year, however, as I keep saying the impact of sky rocketing energy prices is still to be shaken out of the market.

Housing in 2007 seems mostly to blame for higher prices, but energy started having an effect by the end of the year as well:

Price increases for basic and frequently-purchased commodities, like food, also fuelled consumer prices in 2007. However, price declines for a number of commodities, particularly several of those less frequently purchased, such as new vehicles and computer equipment, mitigated the rise in consumer prices. Faced with higher prices for frequently-purchased commodities and lower prices for those not frequently purchased, consumers might perceive that inflation was increasing at a faster pace than measured by aggregate inflation.

Interesting view on things, wonder how important vehicles are going to be in the future? Will there be a glut coming soon, or will the Asian continent simply pick up the slack?

Very interesting indeed, this year is going to be a very different kettle of fish.

Politeness Wins Out

One of the Mantras that I espouse on this humble site is to be Polite when dealing with Customer Service folks in specific and with most folks in general (remember being Polite to Police is very important). Yesterday another example of speaking to someone who you want to fix something in a polite way helps out again.

My eldest just graduated from High School and we are very proud, however, we noticed she didn’t get an Ontario Scholar “tag” in her graduation. Given her previous marks we were alarmed to think what might have happened to her marks to cause this inability to keep her average at the correct level (80% for 6 Grade 12 courses).

I decided after discussing (calmly) with my daughter that there must have been a mistake, so I called the school and asked in a polite way if someone could look into this for me, and sure enough it was an error on their part and they are rectifying the situation. I was very thankful to the woman who called me back, but it again shows that acting in an aggressive or rude fashion rarely gets you what you want (unless you are a loan shark), but with a little politeness and courteousness you’d be surprised what can happen.

Happy long weekend to my Canadian readers (ok EXTRA long weekend, since you have to take Monday off to really make it a long weekend).