Slowing Inflation Primes G-7 Central Banks for June
Inflation-related releases across the Group of Seven will prime central bankers for crucial June interest-rate decisions, just as they meet in Italy to discuss the state of the world economy.
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Inflation-related releases across the Group of Seven will prime central bankers for crucial June interest-rate decisions, just as they meet in Italy to discuss the state of the world economy.
Big US bond investors have been aggressively shifting money into long-dated notes, betting that the unloved asset class will be one of the winners from eventual interest rate cuts.
A measure of underlying US inflation cooled in April for the first time in six months, a small step in the right direction for Federal Reserve officials looking to start cutting interest rates this year.
Emerging-market currencies dipped Friday on dwindling optimism over Federal Reserve rate cuts, paring their fourth-straight week of gains.
The owner of a historic office building in Manhattan’s Financial District has filed bankruptcy to sell the property, which has been subject to foreclosure and suffered from a lack of tenants due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Jun 16, 2016
Reuters
,Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ratcheted up the alarm this week over runaway housing prices that have emerged as the most important issue facing Canada’s economy, but not everyone is convinced the rhetoric is justified.
“If some people being priced out of single-detached homes in Toronto and Vancouver is a significant crisis, what would 2008 be, the apocalypse?,” said David Baskin, president of Baskin Wealth Management, in an interview with BNN.
Less than 24 hours earlier, Trudeau vowed to take action to rein in the country’s hottest housing markets.
“This is a very significant crisis,” he said Thursday in Burnaby, B.C. “We know that we need to take measures so that the affordability of home is accessible for more Canadians who increasingly look at markets like here in the Lower Mainland and in Toronto as significant barriers to achieving their dreams and their successes.”
Canadian governments have tightened mortgage regulations five times since 2008 in a bid to cool a housing market boom fueled partly by low interest rates.
Trudeau is facing calls for his Liberal government to do more amid concerns that markets such as Vancouver and Toronto are becoming over-valued. He’s convening a roundtable in Vancouver on Friday to address housing affordability concerns.
The Bank of Canada issued an unusually blunt warning on June 9, saying the rapid pace of home price increases in Toronto and Vancouver was unlikely to continue and adding the potential for a downturn was growing.
Canadian home prices rose 1.8 per cent in May from a month earlier, and were up 9.0 per cent from the year before, according to data released on Tuesday.
Baskin argues there are some obvious options at the government’s disposal if it want to rein in surging prices, including non-resident transfer taxes and taxes on vacant units.
“Significant crisis is when the banking system freezes up and there’s a chance the world economy is going to collapse,” Baskin said. “This is an addressable problem, please!”
- With files from BNN