Economics Reports

How things have changed... as recently as April, bond markets were pricing in rate cuts by the Fed and the Bank of Canada before this year was out.

Three major economies got fresh news on inflation in the last week and a half, but judging by how two-year yields reacted, the one with the worst news was the most blessed, and the one that looked the least bad is in the most trouble.

When “data dependance” is the mantra, as it is these days, there’s no point asking the Fed what they’re going to do for you on the interest rate front in 2024.

Declining energy prices were a major factor in quelling Canadian and US headline inflation in the past year, but in the case of oil and gasoline, we’ve reached a turning point.

If you’re up on your English lit, you’d know that it was Shakespeare’s character Fallstaff who advised that sometimes, discretion is the better part of valour...

Even if by a miracle we start doing all the right things to increase housing supply, it will take years for that supply to come to the market. Meanwhile, demand is rising fast...

The week ahead’s quarterly GDP likely won’t raise any eyebrows, and should be enough to dampen recession fears for a while longer.

When will the Bank of Canada decide that enough is enough, put away their interest rate hike weapon, and even start easing up on rates?

Don’t look now, but the Atlanta Fed’s nowcasting model is projecting a stunning 5.8% growth rate for the US economy in Q3...

How worried should commodities markets be, particularly those that feasted on Chinese demand gains in prior decades?

In this edition of the CIBC Economic Insights, our economists examine the cracks that are starting to appear in Canadian consumers’ spending behaviour and finances, and how they are expected to get gradually wider as households refinance mortgages at higher interest rates, and the unemployment rate drifts higher.

F. Scott Fitzgerald noted that the rich “are different from you and me.” But in one important way for the economy, a lot of Canadians have temporarily shared something in common with the monied class.

We at CIBC Economics have never joined the herd calling for outright recessions in the US and Canada as a necessary evil to return to a 2% inflation target.

Give the Bank of Canada two choices: inflation or a recession, and the Bank will take a recession any day. The reason is that central banks have a lot of experience and effective tools to fight recessions, while rising inflation expectations are a central banker’s worst nightmare. But soon enough the current disinflationary forces will be too noticeable to ignore, even for a biased bank.

Neils Bohr supposedly said that “prediction is very difficult, especially about the future”, and he had the immutable laws of physics to work with, not the hazy social science of economics.

The Bank of Canada delivered the 25bp hike that was widely expected today, taking the overnight rate up to 5.0%, in light of evidence that excess demand and core inflation are proving "more persistent" than expected and a revised forecast that suggests inflation will take longer to return to its 2% target.