For years people have been predicting the end of cash. Jack Lefler in 1968 wrote about a cashless society where people use a single ID card for all transactions. The Economist in 2007 predicted cash was a dinosaur doomed to extinction in a cover article entitled “The End of the Cash Era.” More recently at
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Good Morning! The pandemic housing market has defied gravity — and Canadians are paying for it. Housing affordability in the first quarter of this year saw its worst decline since 2018, and its first fall in four quarters, according to the National Bank of Canada’s housing affordability monitor. It now takes a representative Canadian household
Good morning! Canadians’ insurance bills are the highest in the OECD as a percentage of GDP, according to a new report by C.D Howe Institute. “Canada’s auto, property and liability gross written premiums from 2015 to 2018 amounted to 2.7 per cent of its GDP on average, compared to an OECD average of 1.6 per
Good morning! The loonie pushed through the psychologically important 80 U.S. cent barrier in recent weeks for the first time since 2018, and analysts believe it’s next move is most likely northwards. Scotiabank analyst Hugo Ste-Marie says technical charts suggest the loonie “appears likely to reach at minimum” near US$0.82. The currency was trading at
Good Morning! Well, that was a surprise. The Bank of Canada took a step towards easing pandemic stimulus yesterday — the biggest yet by a major economy — with a hawkishness that surprised many observers. Not only did it say it would reduce purchases of government debt (which was expected), it also brought forward its