Further Decline in Inflation in February Will Keep the Bank of Canada On Hold in April All eyes will be on the Federal Reserve tomorrow when they decide whether to hold rates steady because of the banking crisis or raise the overnight rate by 25 basis points (bps). Before the run on Silicon Valley Bank, markets were betting the Fed […]
Housing Market Could Be Poised For A Spring Rebound The Canadian Real Estate Association says home sales in February bounced 2.3% from the previous month. Homeowners and buyers were comforted by the guidance from the Bank of Canada that it would likely pause rate hikes for the first time in a year. The Canadian aggregate benchmark home price dropped 1.1% in […]
US Policymakers Take Emergency Action To Protect Depositors At Failed Banks Silicon Valley Bank (SVP) had a sterling reputation among the many tech start-ups it helped to finance. What brought SVB down was an old-fashioned bank run set off in 2021 by a series of bad decisions. That year, the stock market boomed, interest rates were near zero, and the […]
Canadian Labour Market Jeopardizes Rate Pause Today’s Labour Force Survey (LFS) for February was much stronger than expected, questioning how long the Bank of Canada’s rate pause can last. Following the 150,000 jobs gain in January, economists expected a small increase of 10,000 positions and a jobless rate of 5.1%. Instead, the economy added 21,800 jobs in February, and the unemployment rate held […]
The Bank of Canada Holds Rates Steady Even As the Fed Promises to Push Higher As expected, the central bank held the overnight rate at 4.5%, ending, for now, the eight consecutive rate increases over the past year. The Bank is also continuing its policy of quantitative tightening. This is the first pause among major central banks. Economic growth ground to […]