- Economy is in excess demand. Unfilled jobs are at a record level
- There's lots of room to reduce vacancies without significantly increasing unemployment
- Unlike many of our trading partners, high commodity prices are bringing income into the country
- By front loading, we're trying to avoid even-higher rates down the road
- So far we're not seeing a wage-price spiral
- We are seeing firms passing through higher input costs quite quickly
I want to emphasize how many times he repeated that front-loading was an effort to avoid hiking more later. He repeated it at least five times and it's clearly the message he wants to send. I don't think he's trying to push up the terminal top of where rates are headed here, he just wants to get there faster.
Rogers on housing
- 35% of Canadians have a mortgage and the vast majority of those are fixed
- Housing is very interest-rate sensitive
- Housing prices have been unsustainably high
- We're aiming to restore the balance in the housing market
I worry there's way to much emphasis here on people's ability to pay and not enough on what happens to new buyers (and prices) when prices fall. The comments from Rogers sounded almost like they want to torpedo the housing market.
CAD is trading at 1.2951.