Bank of Canada raises its interest rate to 5%
Bank of Canada raises its interest rate to 5%
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I'm a little confused on the BoC's decision-making here. Don't interest rate changes take ~12 months to permeate the market? It's like these rate changes are being fired from a machine gun, won't this lead to an over-correction in achieving inflation targets?
BoC is helping rich people and corporations with their wealth transfer as regular people who bought in the last 3 years will be forced to sell their house to someone else so they can rent it at a higher price than their mortgage was while losing their asset.
Please start to get loud about this.
REITS need to be banned. People owning multiple homes should face a heavy tax that only increases with each property you hoard. Fuck this noise.
I agree with you. Maybe I'm wrong, but people who own even one home are an older demographic that votes in significant numbers. I feel like the fact that no federal party is seriously talking about fixing the housing issue is a reflection of that.
Sadly the situation will get way worse for millennials and gen z, who are already dealing with bad wages, eye watering tuition rates and a depressing job market. My dad was frugal, but earned 2 university degrees, bought a house and two cars while working as a lifeguard and then a teacher. Today, that would not be possible. Right now, students taking education in post secondary (& probably working a job or two to pay for it) are likely to graduate with crippling debt, and aren't even certain to get a job in their field. Sad state of affairs.
Especially when you consider that interest costs are what is now driving inflation:
The mortgage interest cost index (+29.9%) remained the largest contributor to the year-over-year CPI increase. Excluding mortgage interest cost, the CPI rose 2.5% in May
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/230627/dq230627a-eng.htm?indid=3665-1&indgeo=0
Overall I feel that's their idea. Aggressive rate hikes in quick succession slows down the red hot economy quickly, but also creates an air of uncertainty. This causes corporations to panic and start thinking about pausing promotions and even begin layoffs. And we all know, the best way to reduce inflation and slow down an economy is to have more unemployed and poor people. The government knows that as long as companies keep paying people a lot of money, people gonna a keep buying shit.
Who's getting paid a lot of money? I was under the impression everyone's been getting paid shit for the past 30 years and things keep getting more expensive.
By everyone, I think you mean at the lower end of the pay Spectrum. Minimum wage hasn't kept up for the past 30 years, but as you climb higher, the pay has certainly skyrocketed. And it's these people that drive up the cost of housing. If everyone was being paid like shit, house prices wouldn't have skyrocketed.
In 1980, a person making minimum wage could afford a house and a CEO coukd afford 5 houses. Today, minimum wage makers can afford 0 houses, while the CEO can afford 20. On average, house buying capacity has gone up Imo. It's just the split that fucks over the poor people.
Mortgage rates in Canada were running over 15% in 1980 and peaked at near 22% in 1981. Minimum wage was about $3.25 depending on province, about $11.76/hr in today's money. They weren't buying houses. A lot of people were absolutely slammed if they had to renew their previous 11-13% mortgage at 22%.
There's a bunch of other factors involved too. Median house size has doubled since 1970 (1200sq ft to 2600 sq ft), restrictive zoning and forcing contractors to also develop single use subdivisions puts their costs up, and promoted higher margin developments. Also, the feds and provinces have drastically reduced the construction of public housing.
Interesting stats. I just really hope to one day be able to buy a small home with a little garage and a workshop for tinkering. Maybe the sun has set on that opportunity in this country and I'll be crammed into some sort of post apocalyptic japanese pod hotel in a neighborhood that looks like district 9. Federal political parties plz halp.
Mortgage rates in Canada were running over 15% in 1980 and peaked at near 22% in 1981. Minimum wage was about $3.25 depending on province, about $11.76/hr in today's money. They weren't buying houses. A lot of people were absolutely slammed if they had to renew their previous 11-13% mortgage at 22%.
There's a bunch of other factors involved too. Median house size has doubled since 1970 (1200sq ft to 2600 sq ft), restrictive zoning and forcing contractors to also develop single use subdivisions puts their costs up, and promoted higher margin developments. Also, the feds and provinces have drastically reduced the construction of public housing.
it's not even CEOs as a class. It's a tiny percentage of the CEOs of the largest companies, and even the richest Canadian CEOs are chump change compared to the "globally wealthy" that have real power. The richest Canadians, who don't work as CEOs, aren't in the top 2000 global wealth.
CEO is a job. Rich people don't have jobs. They make their money by being rich, raking it in under ALL economic scenarios.
When the BoC kept rates steady, indicators (such as housing price) started inflating again. I think their concern is that the leading indicators (e.g. job growth and employment) haven't started to fall.
Most of the media I've seen says it takes 12-18 months for the effects of interest rate changes to kick in. So yeah, it seems rapid fire.