Picturing budget speeches

By macleans.ca - Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 3:53 PM - 0 Comments

How different is one budget speech from another?

Thanks to the World Wide Web, we have easy access to successive federal budget speeches, going back to 1995, with the exception of 2002, in which no budget was tabled.

While governments tend to distance themselves from their predecessors, and attempt to establish their own unique tone and approach in presenting their revenue and spending plans, certain key words are virtually constant from year to year. As these word clouds show, it’s often in the little words that we see subtle differences, perhaps indicating the spirit of the times and the perspective of a given government.

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Picturing budget speeches

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Budget 1995

"Seizing Opportunity Today"

Paul Martin, February 27, 1995

1 of 17 Photos

Next "Securing the Future"

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Methodology: The text of all 16 available budget speeches was individually entered into Wordle to generate these unique word-clouds. In each case the same format and font were used; colour was varied only for visual interest.

Click here for all the latest news and insight on the 2012 federal budget

Concerned about the federal debt? Look at the provinces.

By Erica Alini - Thursday, March 29, 2012 at 11:14 AM - 0 Comments

Worried about the federal debt? There is actually a lot more to fret about when looking at provincial and territorial public coffers. Red ink spilled by Ottawa used make up 62 per cent of  government debt two decades ago–now it accounts for only about a third of the total, as provincial and territorial debt ballooned from 34 to 47 per cent. Even local governments have been adding a weighty bit to our overall public debt burden: Their share went up from two to eight per cent in 20 years. On the other hand, while the proportion of public debt tied to the CPP and QPP swelled up considerably between 1991 and 2001–from two to twenty per cent–it now accounts for a relatively contained 12 per cent of the total.

*Source: Statistics Canada.

Tim Cook’s more mature Apple

By Erica Alini - Monday, March 19, 2012 at 6:28 PM - 0 Comments

Jeff Chiu/AP Photo

If Apple was a woman, she would be one of those heavenly goddesses whom time does not touch. One of those creatures whose hair never grays, whose skin never ages and whose generous endowments seem to be completely unaffected by the laws of gravity with which the rest of us have to contend. In other words, one of those women most other women hate.

That pretty much sums up how unnaturally youthful Apple looks for its age—and how the competition feels about it. As Nick Wingfield wrote in the New York Times this morning, Apple has been on a “growth spurt” that’s very unusual for a company that’s three-and-a-half decades old.

One sign of aging emerged this morning, though, when the tech behemoth announced that, for the first time since 1995, it would pay a stock dividend. Handing stockholders cash is lady-like behaviour—one of those things slow-growing giants like Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and IMB do, but that Apple, the hot chick on the block for years now, had refused to.

Continue…

Is India really a superpower?

By Erica Alini - Friday, March 9, 2012 at 6:22 PM - 0 Comments

Sukanto Debnath/Flickr

For all the hype around the unstoppable ascent of the world’s most populous democracy, “India is not a superpower (and may never be),” according to a group of researchers at the London School of Economics, who just penned an interesting new study on the topic.

The paper, of course, isn’t denying India’s rise. After all, the country’s economy expanded fourfold in the last 10 years, lifting millions out of poverty along the way. And if its domestic market weren’t so tied up with rules meant to keep foreigners at bay, Western companies would probably be stepping over each other to win Indian contracts, as they’re doing right now in China.

But an economic miracle isn’t enough to qualify for superpower status, the authors of the report argue. India is still grappling with a number of serious domestic challenges. These include a disruptive Maoist guerrilla faction; the terrible waste of human resources that is the Hindu caste system; and a corrupt and divided political leadership that can’t ever come up with a coherent, grand strategy for anything from developing the economy to rebooting the military.

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Bank of Canada singles out household debt as ‘biggest domestic risk’

By Erica Alini - Thursday, March 8, 2012 at 11:02 AM - 0 Comments

The Bank of Canada thinks interest rates are fine where they are, at least for now. It announced today that it will hold the key rate at one per cent, where it’s been since September 2010, and didn’t discuss possible hikes. Those accustomed to the central bank’s penchant for dulling the news got the message: ”the Bank is a bit less dovish,” reads a CIBC note, which predicts that “markets will pick up on the slightly improved change in tone on the economy, and might move forward the implied date for the first rate hike.”

The bank, in fact, said it believes the Europeans will manage their public debt mess without bringing down the system, and that the Canadian economic outlook has ”marginally improved,” in part because the U.S.  is doing a little better.

But another big reason to believe Mark Carney may be closer to a rate hike than previously thought, is the bank’s statement about Canadian wallets:

Canadian household spending is expected to remain high relative to GDP as households add to their debt burden, which remains the biggest domestic risk. 

As Tamsin McMahon wrote a couple of weeks ago in Maclean’s, Canadians owe an average of $1.53 for every dollar they earn–just below where American debt stood when housemageddon hit south of the border. And there’s little question that record-low interest rate have encouraged Canadian borrowing, much as they did in the U.S. under Alan Greenspan, who is widely blamed for bringing America from the dot-com bust to the housing crisis. Up here, though, it’s hard to point the finger against Carney, whose hands are tied by a lucklustre global economy, the Fed’s decision to keep U.S. rates low through 2014, and rising commodity prices, which are already pushing up the loonie and hurting exports and the manufacturing sector.

Still, the bank sounded an upbeat note—and that may indicate that the rate hike the housing sector very much needs may be closer than we dared hope for.

Hacking health care–in a good way

By Julia Belluz - Monday, March 5, 2012 at 2:33 PM - 0 Comments

Toca Boca/Flickr

Dr. Shaheed Merani had barely finished his morning coffee last Saturday, when the solution to a tech challenge that’s plagued his work as an Edmonton hospital resident was almost at the prototype stage.

It was day one of HackingHealth, Canada’s first health-focused hackathon. Nearly 70 health professionals like Dr. Merani had flown in to Montreal from across the country for one purpose: to connect with some 160 designers and developers, and tackle the tech issues that bog down their professional lives.

The event was inspired by the programming jam-sessions run by giants like Facebook, where computer geeks get together for a day or so and, in Red Bull-fuelled bursts, design new website features, games or apps. HackingHealth, though, was devoted to solving problems in that most sluggish sector: health care.

Sitting at a lunch table on the McGill University campus, three coders quietly but furiously clicked away on their laptops, working on the solution to the conundrum that’s been frustrating Dr. Merani and many of his colleagues: the anachronistic domination of pagers and fax machines in hospital communication. Right now, Dr. Merani said, physicians often use instant messages to discuss a patient’s case and its developments, but those texts aren’t captured in patient files. Also, docs are required to file orders for prescriptions and medical tests via fax—which is more complicated and slower than sending them via text. Continue…

Ever pricier peanut butter is forcing food banks to get creative

By Paul Carlucci - Friday, March 2, 2012 at 2:40 PM - 0 Comments

Scott Lipsey/Flickr

Having your mouth glued shut with peanut butter is a delightful experience essential to every North American childhood, but the brown spread has always been popular with food banks as well because it has a high nutritional value–and it’s affordable. No longer, though. A one-kilogram jar is now selling for $7 or more, and charities across Canada are feeling the pressure to find other ways to feed a client base that’s grown considerably since the financial crisis.

On the last week of February, and five months into the Calgary Food Bank’s (CFB) budget year, there were only 2,500 jars of peanut butter left in the warehouse–enough for just one more week. For CFB’s 147,000 regular clients, that may mean having to switch to a very different diet very soon. When stocks of the golden spread run low, the bank replaces peanut butter jars with tuna cans, according to Kathryn Sim, a CFB spokesperson. “We substitute a protein for a protein,” she says. “That might make someone’s breakfast a little more challenging, but our goal is to make sure people are walking away with nutritionally balanced groceries for a week.”

Continue…

Stupid rules are sinking the Greek economy

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 at 3:46 PM - 0 Comments

gr33ndata/Flickr

Unless you’ve been covering your ears and screaming every time a piece of economic news crossed your path, you’ve heard about Greece’s bloated bureaucracy and how it’s been crippling the country’s economy for decades. You might also know that the bureaucracy is the hose through which Greece’s political class disseminates favours and cultivates political loyalty, which is why trimming it is such an uphill battle for the wimpy technocratic government of Lucas Papademos.

Finally, if you happen to follow the work of economist Megan Greene, you are also aware that the mountains of paperwork Greek citizens have to wade through for even the most mundane necessities ensure a steady income for notaries, lawyers, tax men, architects and inspectors. And yet, even if you already know all of this, the anecdotal evidence of a country being suffocated by dumb rules remains astounding. Here’s a small sample:

Pilots must be Greek… actually, never mind.

When Canadian entrepreneur Steve Earle set up a seaplane airline to transport rich tourists to Greece’s many gorgeous and poorly connected islands, he was told by a civil servant that all his pilots had to be Greek. But six months after his company had started training what Earle says were the country’s first seaplane pilots, news came that it was actually perfectly acceptable to fill the vacancies with non-European recruits. Among other things that reportedly helped sink Earle’s business were the more than 300 trips his managing director had to make to police stations to “get official affirmations of his signature,” and having to provide engineering specifications for every cleat the company used at its embarkment floats. Continue…

The EU has a point about the oilsands

By Erica Alini - Friday, February 24, 2012 at 5:53 PM - 0 Comments

Jeff McIntosh/AP Photo

Yesterday marked a rather unremarkable chapter in the ongoing PR battle between the Harper government and much of the rest of the world around Alberta’s oil. On Thursday the EU held a vote on whether to label the oilsands as a dirtier kind of feedstock, a move that would make fuel derived from it less competitive compared to oil refined from “cleaner” kinds of crude. It was a deliberation among technical experts–not elected officials–and it failed to reach the qualified majority required under the EU’s mind-boggling voting system anyway. The vote that matters (by ministers of EU countries) will be held in June.

Nonetheless, both sides sized this virtually irrelevant step in the EU’s Byzantine legislative process to make some noise in the press–there was also news this week that Ottawa threatened a trade war if Brussels goes ahead with the purported fuel-labelling. So it’s as good an opportunity as any to ask: Does Europe have a valid point about the oilsands?

Brussels’ Fuel Quality Directive, as the measure is called, is far from perfect. Andrew Leach, of the University of Alberta, points out that the EU’s classification of different types of fuel, which is based on definitions used by the U.S. Geological Survey, makes some iffy distinctions between oilsands and other kinds of heavy oil that are likely just as polluting. Trying to classify fuels as more or less dirty based on the type of crude oil they came from, concludes Leach, isn’t the best way to go: “The EU FQD, as proposed, will treat some high emissions crudes as low emissions crudes, and they could greatly improve the policy by initially including all … heavy oil production at a high benchmark.” Even Alberta’s Pembina Institute notes that the EU could fine-tune things by “differentiating in the directive between crude supply types (e.g. for heavy oil).”

Continue…

Econowatch: February 2012

By Colin Campbell - Thursday, February 23, 2012 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Don Denton/CP

Over the last month the police in Italy have been setting up roadblocks in the hunt for thousands of criminals. Specifically, tax cheats. They’re easy to spot, it turns out. They tend to be the ones driving luxury cars, like Ferraris and Range Rovers. After performing roadside checks on nearly 3,000 drivers, officials have recovered $90 million, according to one local report. In the fight to balance budgets, it seems, there is still lots of low-hanging fruit.

In North America, the battle for economic stability is no less critical. The economy appears to be on the uptick in the U.S., where employment and job openings are up sharply. But as Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke said last week, real stability will only come when fiscal policy is “placed on a sustainable path that ensures that debt relative to national income is at least stable or, preferably, declining over time.” The Congressional Budget Office reports, however, that the U.S. deficit is not expected to shrink in the next decade, but will instead hit levels not seen since just after the Second World War.

In Canada, there is no longer the luxury of a rosy jobs picture and growth is slowing. But there is a recognition that out-of-control budgets are a major threat. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty warned this week of labour troubles ahead as he tries to tackle Canada’s ugliest provincial deficit. The federal government has also signalled that it’s serious about getting its books in order, however unpleasant it might seem in the short run. There are hints of an upcoming austerity budget with cuts worth as much as $8 billion a year.

Officials in most of the Western world are at least on the right track to a healthier long-term economy. Or in the case of Italy, the right road.

The good news

Canada’s trade surplus hit $2.7 billion in December, the highest level since the Great Recession. Exports were up 4.5 per cent. The recovery continues.

The median income in the U.S. is on the rise, reaching $51,400 at the end of 2011, up from $49,400 in August. Reports of the death of the middle class are premature.

New home prices in Canada were up in December, but only modestly at 0.1 per cent, compared to 0.3 per cent in November. When will the good times end?

Canadian Tire’s sales jumped 21 per cent in its latest quarter to $3.1 billion. The rise of the dad consumer.

The economies of the developed world, led by the U.S. and Japan, are on the rise, according to the most recent OECD economic survey.

U.S. jobless claims fell to 358,000—12,000 less than expected. Meanwhile, job openings were at their highest level since September 2008. Is this the turnaround America’s been waiting for?

The bad news

A Royal Bank survey found that just 32 per cent of Canadians feel positive about the economic outlook for the next year, down from 43 per cent a year ago, and 56 per cent two years ago.

Credit card debt levels rose by $19.3 billion in December to $2.5 trillion in the U.S. Those rosy holiday shopping figures come at a price.

Gas prices in the U.S. are at their highest level since last September and are expected to soar this summer in North America. Take that road trip while you still can.

The Texas-based energy giant Halliburton says it will stop giving employees BlackBerry smartphones, and use Apple iPhones instead. Another blow for RIM and its vaunted security claims.

PepsiCo plans to cut three per cent of its workforce, or 8,700 jobs, including 100 in Canada, as it struggles with rising food costs. The taste of a laid-off generation.

Inspections were ordered for Airbus’s A380s due to small cracks in wing components. Minor defects were also found in Boeing’s new 787. Big planes, bigger headaches.

By the numbers

$15 Share price for Las Vegas-based casino operator Caesars Entertainment after its IPO last week. Shares opened the day at just $9.

2020 The year Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Ottawa’s planned changes to Old Age Security will likely kick in.

4,000 Jobs cut at Nokia, the world’s biggest but struggling cellphone maker.

$125,000 Reported cap on cash bonuses at Morgan Stanley this year.

$1.5 billion The lawsuit facing Apple over the use of the iPad name in China, where it was registered by another firm.

$90 billion Value of the proposed merger between mining giant Xstrata and Glencore.

‘No measure of justice is enough to make it right for a family who’s had their piece of the American dream wrongly taken from them. But this settlement is a start.’—President Barack Obama on the $26-billion housing settlement reached between federal and state governments and five major mortgage servicers. The majority of the money will go to reduce mortgage debts and refinance loans at lower rates, while $1.5 billion will go to the 750,000 Americans who lost their homes in foreclosures between 2008 and 2011.

Signs of the Times: Towering investments

The U.S. rush to cash in on Canada’s hot retail sector continues as American consumers keep their wallets shut tight. Wal-Mart has decided to spend $750 million to expand and remodel some of its 333 Canadian stores, while also building new ones. The move comes as rival Target prepares to enter Canada next year.

The public will have a chance to own a piece of New York’s 102-storey Empire State Building. Owners of the iconic tower, opened in 1931, are planning an initial public offering that’s expected to raise as much as $1 billion.

In the age of email and Twitter, Canada Post has removed more than 1,000 red letter boxes from street corners across the country. With mail volume down nearly 20 per cent in the past five years, postal workers were finding some of the street boxes completely empty.

It’s not a pretty picture at Eastman Kodak, now in bankruptcy protection. After dumping its film business, the company now plans to stop selling digital cameras (which it invented), pocket video cameras and digital picture frames to save money.

Five seriously austere measures that aren’t in the Drummond report

By Erica Alini - Friday, February 17, 2012 at 6:35 PM - 0 Comments

Roger Blackwell/Flickr

Economists have long warned that current spending patterns have put Ontario on track for a fiscal doomsday. In an attempt to show Ontarians the way to economic salvation, Premier Dalton McGuinty appointed a commission on public-service reform last year, headed by former TD economist Don Drummond. His report, unveiled on Wednesday, is a 362-item long laundry list of cost-cutting (and a few revenue-boosting) measures the provincial government should consider to keep the public deficit from ballooning to $30.2 billion by 2017-18. The prescriptions go far beyond the usual calls for budget freezes and capping wage increases in the public sector; Drummond recommends scrapping all-day kindergarten, increasing class sizes, and shutting down casinos. To make Ontarians feel better about the coming age of austerity, we’ve put together a list of the five most unusual ideas other governments have considered or implemented to fix their own beleaguered finances. 

Continue…

Healthcare: Technology is a bigger cost driver than demography

By Julia Belluz - Friday, February 10, 2012 at 12:34 PM - 0 Comments

dno1967b/Flickr

An aging population—or “gray tsunami”—is the shadow lurking in the background of health care, poised to drive up health-care spending and wipe out the system as we know it. Technology, on the other hand, is a means to improving efficiency in the system and reducing costs. Consider the early, sparkling promises of Obamacare south of the border or electronic health records in Canada. Policymakers trumpet this conventional wisdom—but it isn’t quite right.

As a recent report by the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s argues, your grandmother’s visits to the doctor aren’t the key driver of health costs. Health technology, however—encompassing anything from drugs to diagnostic imaging—is becoming the great burden on the health systems of G20 countries.

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How the government wants to trick us into saving more

By Erica Alini - Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 2:48 PM - 0 Comments

eyewash/flickr

According to how economists have long imagined us, the way we plan for retirement works somewhat like this:

• Phase one: straight out of school, we calculate how much money we’re going to need after our working days are over, and lay down a carefully thought-out savings plan;
• Phase two: as we climb the corporate ladder, we’re happily shaving larger and larger slices off our paycheques, pouring the cash into carefully selected and closely monitored investments;
• Phase three: we bid good-bye to our fellow co-workers of a lifetime and joyfully retire to freedom sixty-…. whatever.

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In a cooling housing market should you wait to buy and hurry up to sell?

By Erica Alini - Friday, February 3, 2012 at 9:18 PM - 0 Comments

Danny Johnston/AP Photo

Last week, Econowatch looked at the latest dire warnings about Canada’s real estate market. Everyone from the big banks, through Bank of Canada’s Mark Carney to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty is sounding alarm bells about inflated property, especially in hot markets like Toronto and Vancouver. With Canada’s economy slowing down and households overburdened by debt, many predict house prices will start heading south in 2012. On the other hand, the current record-low interest rates don’t have much place to go but up.  What does this mean for homebuyers and sellers? We asked realtors and mortgage brokers to weigh in.

John Pasalis is a Toronto realtor and the owner of Realosophy Realty Inc. in Toronto, a residential real estate brokerage that focuses on researching the city’s neighbourhoods. Larry Yatkowsky is a Vancouver realtor at Yatter Matters. Realtor Manny Riebeling focuses on Vancouver West and downtown areas and specializes in luxury properties and condos. David Larock is a Toronto-based, independent full-time mortgage planner. Kerri-Lynn McAllister is the editor at RateHub.ca, a website that compares mortgage rates in Canada.

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As the economy slows down, should austerity pick up speed?

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 2:01 PM - 0 Comments

Statistics Canada

Canada’s GDP numbers for November came out this morning, and it was a rude awakening. The economy slowed down unexpectedly in November, with output dipping 0.1 per cent, as opposed to the consensus forecast of 0.2 per cent growth. “While it initially appeared that the Canadian economy smoothly decelerated late last year, it now looks like Canada stumbled as it approached the 2011 finish line,” CIBC quipped in a note.

Dragging down overall output was a 2.5 per cent drop in oil and gas extraction activity, possibly due to low oil and gas prices and softening demand for exports. Notably, construction in both the residential and non-residential sector was down 0.3 per cent.

Statistics Canada

The November slowdown is expected to bring down quarterly growth from a projected two per cent annualized expansion. Recession–defined by economists as two consecutive quarters of negative growth–isn’t necessarily upon us. But with Europe teetering on the brink of fiscal disaster, global demand cooling, and the Canadian housing market possibly due for a downturn–which could shave as much as one per cent off of GDP, according to some estimates–is it really time for the Harper government to pull the breaks on public spending?

Another concern is that, with rates already at record lows, there’s little the Bank of Canada can do to soften the impact of deficit cuts with expansionary monetary policy. As Stephen Gordon noted yesterday, there are steep costs associated with introducing austerity at the wrong point of the business cycle.

Ghana’s advantage: An agriculture board?

By Paul Carlucci - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 2:41 PM - 0 Comments

A cocoa pod growing in Ghana’s Volta Region. The crop, which was brought to West Africa from South America by missionaries, represents one of Ghana’s most important economic drivers. (Photograph by Paul Carlucci)

It’s been over 30 years since Ghana was the world’s reigning king of cocoa, the throne long since usurped by West African neighbour Ivory Coast. But because of a series of policies by the Ghana Cocoa Board, production exploded in 2011, reaching a record one million metric tonnes. That number translated into US $1.7 billion in government revenues last year, up nearly 30 per cent from a record of US $1.2 billion in fiscal 2004.

Recent oil discoveries are fuelling an economic boom, but they haven’t stirred the government’s focus away from cocoa, one of the country’s traditional commodity exports, along with gold. According to official estimates, cocoa production grew by 14 per cent in 2011, compared to two per cent growth for the overall agricultural sector. President John Atta Mills’ administration chalks the boom up to the Cocoa Board policy package, which included subsidized fertilizers, farm rehabilitation, and timely payment of remuneration and bonuses for farmers.

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A Toronto homebuyer takes his frustrations to the blogosphere

By Erica Alini - Monday, January 30, 2012 at 12:26 PM - 0 Comments

Last week, we wrote about whether Canada’s real estate market is on the cusp of a painful though not disastrous pop or an all-out meltdown like the ones that hit the U.S. and Ireland. Econowatch would like to kick off this week by drawing your attention to FML Listings, an anonymous blog launched by a self-described frustrated Toronto homebuyer. It’s based on a simple, brilliant idea: Pick a modest house or condo with an outrageous price tag, and rail against it in 50-100 words. Here’s today’s gem about a one-bedroom, one-bathroom going for $548,000: Continue…

Ottawa apparently sees the NEB as a friend of the oil industry

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 5:11 PM - 0 Comments

Canada’s nominally independent energy regulator, the National Energy Board (which is currently evaluating Enbridge’s plan to build the Northern Gateway pipeline) is an ally of the federal government, according to an embarrassing official policy paper that was made public on Thursday. First Nations, on the other hand, are an adversary.

Greenpeace just published pages of documents obtained by the Climate Action Network through a freedom of information request. They show the NEB listed among entities Ottawa considers to be allies in its struggle to promote oil sands abroad. In an adjacent column on the same piece of paper, First Nations appear under “adversaries.”  The documents were drafted by Canada’s international trade ministry, and they lay out an advocacy strategy to combat criticism of Canada’s oil sands in the European Union. Continue…

What happens when Canada’s housing bubble pops?

By Erica Alini - Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 1:56 PM - 0 Comments

A few days ago, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney released another alarming, albeit muted, warning shot about the state of the Canadian real estate market. Some properties in Canada are “probably overvalued,” the central banker said during an interview with CTV. Last week Finance Minister Jim Flaherty hinted he is also worried about housing: “We watch the housing market carefully and we are prepared to intervene if necessary,” he said.

So, are we literally living in a bubble? And when it bursts, will it get as ugly as it did south of the border? Here’s where the most recent speculation is pointing: Continue…

The most influential brand in Canada? Microsoft.

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, January 24, 2012 at 4:36 PM - 0 Comments

Polling firm Ipsos Reid recently picked Canadians’ brains on who they think are the most influential brands in the country. The pollster compiled a list of 100 brands, which included the brands that spend the most on advertising in Canada every year–plus a few well-known names that don’t spend much at all, like Twitter, but that Ipsos researchers thought were influential nonetheless. Brand names could be those of corporations, like Microsoft, products, like the BlackBerry, and sometimes both (like Google and Youtube). Then Ipsos asked every one of 1,000 adult responders to rank ten out of the 100 selected brands, so that, in the end, every brand had been rated 100 times, Ipsos president of market research Steve Levy told Maclean’s.

The results? Stunning.

The most influential brand in Canada turned out to be none other than Microsoft, which beat out traditionally cooler competitors Google (which came in second) and Apple (fourth). Could it be that Canadian consumers are already well aware that Microsoft is finally coming back–or, as Businessweek put it, Steve Ballmer is no longer Mr. Monkey Boy?

And the BlackBerry? Nowhere to be found in the top 10.

For more on the Ipsos Influence Index Study, click here.

Why did SOPA get so far? Geeks don’t lobby.

By Erica Alini - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 5:16 PM - 0 Comments

Congress received over $14 million from interest groups linked to the entertainment industry, which support the Stop Online Piracy Act in the House, and Protect IP Act in the Senate.

That was 7.2 times more than what Internet interest groups who (vehemently) oppose those bills put in the pockets of Capitol Hill lawmakers: a mere $2 million.

Still surprised two pieces of legislation as patently flawed as SOPA and PIPA made it this far in Congress?

For details on this dirty little open secret, check out this post by MapLight, a research company that tracks down campaign finance and breaks it down by hot-button bills, those who write them, and those who pay the big bucks.

As the Financial Times (where I read about MapLight in the first place–tip o’ the hat) rightly notes, it’s high time for Silicon Valley to recognize that what goes on in Washington doesn’t stay in Washington.

Keystone XL wars: Much ado about nothing, basically

By Erica Alini - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 4:38 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Levi, a  senior fellow for energy and the environment at the Council on Foreign Relations, has written a must-read list of myths about the (temporarily) defunct Keystone XL. Levi takes aim at climate change scaremongering with the same delight with which he debunks job creation and energy independence fairytales. Here’s a synopsis:

1. The pipeline would have been catastrophic for global climate change. Verdict: false.

2. The pipeline would have reduced U.S. reliance on oil from the Middle East. Verdict: pipe dream.

3. The pipeline would have created hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Verdict: gross exaggeration.

4. The pipeline would have set back the green economy. Verdict: umm… not true.

5. If we don’t build the pipeline and buy their oil, Canada will sell it to China. Verdict: so what?*

*hem, this, of course, from an American point of view.

Read the rest here.

Econowatch: January 2012

By Colin Campbell - Friday, January 20, 2012 at 7:40 AM - 0 Comments

Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press

Canada’s big banks offered homebuyers a big fat incentive last week when, led by the Bank of Montreal, most dropped their five-year fixed mortgage rates to an unheard of 2.99 per cent. Like the failing Detroit auto industry of the early 2000s, with its zero per cent financing, no-money-down offers, Canada’s banks appear willing to sacrifice some profit to keep the mortgage market booming. They’re still making money—and certainly won’t go bankrupt like two of the Big Three automakers did—but there is a similar whiff of desperation here at a time when the housing market appears to be cooling. Even in once hot markets like Calgary, prices have flattened.

These ultra low rates are bad news for Finance Minister Jim Flaherty and Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney, who’ve been warning Canadians for years to stop taking on record debt loads in this era of easy money. BMO’s rate does come with a few catches, like a maximum 25-year payment period. But that doesn’t mean buyers won’t find themselves in trouble five years from now if rates rise.

Maybe the bigger concern is what happens if the housing market really does head south, and what that means for the Canadian economy. Over the past decade, construction was the second-fastest growing industry, creating one million jobs. It now accounts for an incredible one-tenth of Canada’s GDP. Rising house prices have also made Canadians feel richer and insulated from economic troubles. As the U.S. showed, when housing is stripped from the equation, things can quickly go from bad to worse. Record-low mortgage rates might help keep the economy chugging along, but let’s just hope we’re not now running on fumes.

Continue…

Keystone XL: a timeline

By Gabriela Perdomo and Gustavo Vieira - Wednesday, January 18, 2012 at 5:52 PM - 0 Comments

(Paul Sakuma/AP Photo)

For better or worse, it’s been roadblock after roadblock for North America’s most infamous pipeline. Here’s a look at that tortuous timeline:

February 2005 – TransCanada Corp. announces plans to spend $1.7 billion to build a 3,000 km pipeline to move heavy oil from Alberta to Illinois. About 40 per cent of the route would be a conversion of existing pipelines that carry natural gas to handle 400,000 barrels of heavy crude. TransCanada was expected to be operating the pipeline as early as 2008.

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