Friday has come again, and it has been an interesting week:
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- BCE stock price continues to lower slightly and is around $35 right now, even though the sale to the teacher’s union (et al) has effectively been ok’ed. The rumors now are that the union may not be solvent enough to pull off this kind of a deal, and it may all go down the porcelain deal disposal.
- Banks and financial stock seem to be recovering for now, TD Canada Trust recovering from a near $60 price per share last Friday and now is up to around $64 per share. Does this mean banks are safe to invest in? I always thought so, but that is just my opinion too.
- I complained about the Hidden Prices of Education again. Am I expecting changes? Not really, but it feels better to complain.
- Our friends in the Pay Day Loans business are under even closer scrutiny from the Ontario government, with new regulations being proposed capping their fee structures and forcing them to show their customers where the fees are being charged. Way to go Dalton, guess even an ugly dog has the sun shine on his butt every day or two.
Enjoy your weekend, hopefully the snow is melting where you are (but not too fast).
Construction This Weekend
I will be doing a little work on the site this weekend, so if I disappear for a short period of time, don’t give up hope, I shall return with my odd view on Finances.
“Unemployment in Canada jumped 0.2% last month to move back to 6.0% year in Canada. Employment is up as well, which means there are more of us working too, which always confuses the heck out of me.”
This one is pretty simple. More people got off the couch and said “I want to work” . . . so a higher percentage of the total population is now ‘Unemployed’ because they are activly searching for work but can’t get any, even though there are more jobs available.
The shady confusing stats would go away if they would just call it like it is and tell us our unemployed rate is 38% like it actually is. That looks terrible though, so they had to twist it.
So lets say you have 100 people. 32 of them don’t want to work, and are not participating and 6 of them would like to work, but there are no jobs for them. The other 62 have jobs. Your unemployment rate is 6%, but the amount not employed is 38%.
So lets say 10 of the workers get laid off, and 10 new jobs get created . . .
Of the 32 people not working, 5 of them go . . . ‘Holy crap life would be better if I would just get a job’, so they get those new jobs. 5 of the people that were laid off also get the new jobs.
So now you have 27 people not participating, 11 people who would like jobs but don’t have them, and 62 people working . . . so UNEMPLOYMENT SPIKED TO 11% OMGWTFBBQ!!!!111one!
Yet the ‘unemployed rate’ remained the same at 38% and the situation is basically unchanged. 62 people are still supporting 100 people.
That’s kind of what happened this month.