Canada’s debt threat remains ‘critical,’ global body says

shockedcanadian

Diamond Member
Aug 6, 2012
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This is why NAFTA should be an easy win for the U.S, or, just withdraw. Canadians do not innovate or support liberty, thanks to the Canadian security apparatus lead by the RCMP and their surrogates. We have relied solely on debt to create the optics of an economy.

This is a telling debt signal that has not gone away for more than a decade. Happening at the worst time for the country. Time to put a fork on all the wealth "on paper" Canada has with little innovation or competitiveness.

Canada’s debt threat remains ‘critical,’ global body says

Canada can't quite shake off a key indicator of serious financial system stress.

In a new quarterly report from the Bank for International Settlements, Canada is among the few countries that triggers a warning about high levels of debt compared to longer-term averages. This sends up red flags about risks in the country's domestic banking systems.

BIS, a body made up of the world's central banks, puts a lot of stock in what it calls the "credit-to-GDP gap" as a signal of vulnerability. The gap is the difference between the credit-to-GDP ratio and its long-term trend in a particular country. The analysis looks beyond mere household debt figures to include other loans and fixed-income securities, and it is considered a harbinger of potential financial crises. China and Hong Kong are also noted to be at risk.


Frothy regional housing markets and high household debt levels have been nagging concerns for lenders and policy makers in many major Canadian markets for many years. At the federal level, successive Conservative and Liberal governments have made a number moves that tighten up mortgage rules to discourage home buyers from chasing ever-more-expensive houses with too much debt. Provincial governments in British Columbia and Ontario also put in new measures to try to curb housing speculation by foreign buyers.

Overheated housing markets are a common cause of a big credit-to-GDP gap. Canada's gap now stands at 11.3 percentage points above the long-term average, down from 14.1 percentage points in the previous quarterly reading. While this drop is encouraging, any result of more than 10 percentage points is considered cause for concern.


"In most cases, these large gaps coincided with property price gaps above critical thresholds," the report states. Canada is among the countries that have drawn BIS attention for its soaring property prices in other reports.
 

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