canada

The USD CAD closed higher on Tuesday after the Bank of Canada left interest rates unchanged but warned about the Canadian Dollar’s “persistent strength” and its possible negative impact on the economy. Since October the BoC has been issuing statements regarding the rapid rise in the Canadian Dollar and its potential detrimental effect on the recovering Canadian Dollar.

When you think of Canada, which qualities come to mind: the world's peacekeeper, the friendly nation, a liberal counterweight to the harsher pieties of its southern neighbour, decent, civilised, fair, well-governed? Think again. This country's government is now behaving with all the sophistication of a chimpanzee's tea party.

The USD CAD is trading better ahead of this morning’s Bank of Canada announcement at 8:00am CT. The BoC is expected to leave interest rates at 0.25 percent. It should also reiterate its stance to leave rates historically low until at least July 2010. This statement will be the key to the market’s movement today. If they move up the date then the Canadian Dollar should rally.

On a day when secret meetings are making the headlines, one thing that is not a secret is that the U.S. dollar is weakening. Although the surprise rate hike by the Reserve Bank of Australia drove the greenback to fresh 13 month lows against the Australian dollar, the big story this morning is the surge in gold prices.

In the last few months as the financial crisis has worn on and the perceived fate of the US banking system has ebbed and flowed there have occasionally been articles and blog posts pointing to other countries that have “better” or more sound banking systems. The decline in these places has generally been less and there seems to be less uncertainty about their fates.

Record credit-card defaults in the United States are set to expose severely under-capitalized U.S. banks. Along with soaring default rates in every category of U.S. debt, this will lead to the banker-beggars looking for more blank-cheques from their errand-boy, Tim-the-tax-cheat Geithner – later this year.

For nearly 5,000 years, the price ratio between gold and silver has averaged approximately 15:1. This number is very close to the 17:1 ratio which represents the natural occurrence of the two elements in the Earth's crust. It is interesting to note, however, that through most of history the price ratio has favored silver.

On February 1, 2008, the day that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper appointed Mark Carney as the new Governor of the Bank of Canada, Canada's currency was soaring at a multi-decade high – well above par versus the U.S.

In Part I of this series, I provided a brief exposition on the birth of silver mining, and explained how and why silver came to be universally considered a “precious metal” (and “money”) by humanity.In Part II, I will provide an outline of the development of silver mining, and the huge growth of global, silver stockpiles which accompanied such production-growth – and which ended in the l

Given the rate in which our species is over-populating this planet, in some of my more pessimistic moments, I have envisioned a world where we are all waist-deep in our own “waste”. How ironic would it be if our species' own waste products turned out to be our energy-salvation in the future?A Reuters story demonstrates that such a future is at least plausible.

There was yet another news item out on June 8th concerning still more investing by China in the infrastructure of another commodity-producing nation. While there was nothing especially noteworthy about this one, particular investment, it does not only reinforce an obvious trend – but also counters yet another myth about China's investment policies.The media in the “old” economies of U.S.

U.S. mortgage applications fell to their lowest level since February, in numbers released today. With interest rates guaranteed to go higher (thanks to the collapse in U.S.

Not all the efforts of the U.S. propaganda-machine are directed at generating false-hope in the U.S. economy and warping economic statistics beyond recognition. A large component of this campaign is to undermine confidence in other economies – in order to try to make investing in U.S. assets appear to be the least-worst alternative.Of course, there is no need for the U.S.

The comedy duo of Bernanke & Geithner are still promising an “economic recovery” for the U.S. in the second half of this year, and their faithful, media talking-heads continue to parrot this nonsense.Don't get me wrong here. I'm not suggesting that we couldn't see a positive, GDP reading for the U.S. in the 3rd quarter.

With another, fraudulent U.S. monthly jobs-report due out tomorrow, the U.S. propaganda-machine is uttering one absurdity after another.Today, it was trumpeting the news that “continuing claims” fell last month for the first time in five months.