June 2009 economic progress report

The liberals get the progress report they wanted and the report delivers good economic news for canadians on the progress of the budget and stimulus spending . yet the liberals still don't know if there satisfied , is it time for them to admit that nothing would satisfy them and that there just using the economic crisis in a desperate attempt to return to power .

Yes and all you people who are now unemployed and can't get EI.. go jump in the lake.. we have been in a recession along time and just now they are releasing funds.. get real!

Less than 8 months isn't a long time in government terms.
Actually I think they are ahead of schedule.

funds have been being released for several months and many projects are starting up , the thing is it takes time to get a construction project up and running , they can't get everything in place and ready in a couple of weeks . people just need to be patient and these projects will create jobs in there area .

there is a whole major road in my town being repaved with such funds so projects are geting started , the opposition cannot claim nothing is being done as many projects are up and running .

8 months... we have been in a recession longer than that.. harper just didn't know it.

we've been in a recession longer than that ? according to who , i don't believe any of the economic people said we were in a recession at any time before last fall . so yeah you can keep claiming that or some us a little proof to your claim .

Today's news conference was two-fold, in my opinion. This was the best, most confident I can recall Harper looking. For the first time, for me, he LOOKED like a leader. The other side of the coin is that, as an economist, I still think this approach to the recession is a mistake. The spending Harper's doing is going to end up being a bigger problem than the original problem. I KNOW this. So, maybe it was a total P.R. parlour trick, but I have to admit, Harper looked good.

He's right, Ryan. He's right for two reasons: 1. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. So, you have to be in a recession for 6 months before it's actually officially a recession, by definition; 2. Stock markets typically start to tumble about 12 - 24 months before GDP declines. The stock market started to dive in August of 2007, so that's where the crisis began to show itself, even though in this case, it was about 18 months later before we'd had 2 consecutive quarters of declining GDP.

He's right, Ryan. He's right for two reasons: 1. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. So, you have to be in a recession for 6 months before it's actually officially a recession, by definition; 2. Stock markets typically start to tumble about 12 - 24 months before GDP declines. The stock market started to dive in August of 2007, so that's where the crisis began to show itself, even though in this case, it was about 18 months later before we'd had 2 consecutive quarters of declining GDP.

The typical symptoms of a pending recession weren't there.

The market didn't tumble in August 07, it dropped slightly and then was back up and down like normal until October, 2008.

Either way.

I'm pretty proud of the fact that Canada has one of the best banking systems in the world.

The next improvement should be to stop charging me 2 bucks to access my cash every other day.

He's right, Ryan. He's right for two reasons: 1. A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of declining GDP. So, you have to be in a recession for 6 months before it's actually officially a recession, by definition; 2. Stock markets typically start to tumble about 12 - 24 months before GDP declines. The stock market started to dive in August of 2007, so that's where the crisis began to show itself, even though in this case, it was about 18 months later before we'd had 2 consecutive quarters of declining GDP.

What stock market were you investing in? Either you had the worst broker in Canada or you picked some of the only stocks that lost. People made a killing in 2007 and 2008 right up until about September / October.

I got my PhD in economics at MIT. Where'd you get yours? What "typical symptoms" are you speaking of? This problem reared its ugly head in the summer of '07 when the financial sector started shaking (in July). Bank stocks started diving shortly after that and every economist knew we were headed for the shitter when the fall semester started in '07.

GDP growth flattened out in the summer of '07, going negative in for the first time in December '07. We didn't get 6 consecutive months of declining GDP until January of 2009, making the recession official. Real GDP change figures, monthly from July '07: [0.1% July07, 0.2 Aug, 0.1 Sept, 0.2 Oct, 0.1 Nov, -0.6 Dec, 0.5 Jan08, -0.2 Feb, -0.1 Mar, 0.3 Apr, -0.2 May, 0.1 June, 0.6 July, -0.5 Aug, -0.1 Sept, -0.1 Oct, -0.7 Nov, -1.0 Dec, -0.6 Jan, -0.1 Feb, -0.3 Mar]

But, since our prime minister isn't an economist, it's not really his fault if he didn't know the recession was coming until StatsCan announced it was official this January.

Dude, do you know what a recession is?

Sure he is, he's a trained economist.