GEORGE'S BUBBLICIOUS GOLD VIEW
"I've called gold 'the ultimate bubble,' which means that it may be going higher, but it's certainly not safe. And it's not going to last forever." - in an interview with Thomson Reuters, billionaire investor George Soros suggests the flight-to-safety investing that has pushed gold to record prices may be wrong-headed.
MORTGAGING CANADA'S ECONOMY
"Until now, despite increased debt levels, historically low borrowing rates have enabled Canadian households to reduce their share of disposable income devoted to debt service. This is situation bound to change as the Bank of Canada withdraws monetary stimulus … household credit growth needs to slow down." - OECD says Canadian household debt, which continued to grow despite the recession thanks to cheap mortgage rates, could be the economy's Achilles heel.
TOUGH MEDICINE? WORSE DISEASE
"The Bank of Canada forecasts that, as a result of the crisis, cumulative foregone economic output from 2009 to 2012 will be 16 per cent of GDP in Europe and 9 per cent of GDP in Canada … Surely, and contrary to what some in the industry would have you believe, there is some price worth paying to reduce such tail risks in the future." - Bank of Canada Governor Mark Carney says the cost of implementing the new Basel III global banking reforms - of which Carney himself was among the architects - are nothing compared to the cost of another global banking crisis.
QUOTE-UNQUOTE, BEIJING STYLE
"He thinks a $10-billion U.S. investment is too large for Sinochem, and it is not a good deal." - on the website of Chinese business magazine Caijing, Sinochem vice-president Han Gensheng appears to say his company won't participate in a competing bid for Potash Corp. of Saskatchewan Inc. But his alleged comments later vanished from the website, with Caijing's deputy editor telling Bloomberg that no interview had ever taken place.
A NEW SHERIFF IN OTC-TOWN
"No financial market can afford to remain a Wild West territory … The absence of any regulatory framework for OTC derivatives contributed to the financial crisis and the tremendous consequences we are all suffering from." - Michel Barnier, internal markets commissioner for the European Commission, on the EC's new rules for over-the-counter derivatives trading.
David Parkinson