Danielle Park's Contributions

The truth is that the seeds of the incoming cyclical recession were sown in the reckless excess of the stock boom period of the 90′s, and the credit orgy to 2006 (to 2011 in Canada). The economy is not about to blow up.

"There’s a perception that Canada avoided the subprime mortgage crisis because we’re conservative and we have a good system," CIBC economist Benjamin Tal says. "But it’s not really the case."

The US Fed has aided and abetted today’s ongoing financial crisis through years of relentless intervention under Greenspan and then Bernanke to continually stimulate excessive consumer credit, support asset bubbles and reward reckless bankers with still more cheap credit.

With copper off more than 2% to start this morning on news that Chinese manufacturing is still contracting, it is instructive to remember the extreme correlation between the Canadian stock market and the price of copper over the past few years.

When Morgan Stanley (MS) said in January it had cut its “net exposure” to Italy by $3.4 billion, it didn’t tell investors that the nation paid that entire amount to the bank to exit a bet on interest rates.

Pimco’s Bill Gross tweeted yesterday that the Fed is contemplating an announcement next month of QE3. He cites no source or evidence other than the assertion that the Fed will be forced to keep buying bonds that no one else wants.

Here is a stat to ponder: the Canadian housing market has appreciated 44% since 2006, while the US housing market has declined 32% on average over the same time period.

The vast majority of hedge funds and traditional management companies, including ETF and Index providers, all have a common flaw: they sell people the idea of constant and perpetual allocations to stocks as the correct path to long-term gains and investment success. They do this regardless of price, or cycle or relative valuations.

These two charts from Zerohedge of the 8 most touted internet IPO’s in the past year or so, reiterates my thoughts on new issues pretty well. Media today is all abuzz about the FACEBOOK IPO! They want to know: what do I think?

Yesterday the Federal Reserve released transcripts of its meetings in 2006, offering a new window into what was on the minds of some of the nation’s top economic and financial thinkers just ahead of the financial crisis and subsequent great recession.

Risk appetite is back "roarin' for a priest" today on fresh hopes of European miracles. We have seen these euphoric episodes repeatedly over the past year, only to prove a fleeting preface to the next phase of market decline.

For some time now I have been talking to my kids about the key strengths of democracy: a written constitution, basic rights and freedoms, the social contract and the rule of law. Ignorance is our greatest weakness.

There is no question that desperate waves of government spending and central bank liquidity have created a dramatic rebound in commodity and stock prices over the past 2 years. But just as government rescues failed to change the long term revision back to mean in housing prices, history tells us that the recent top down efforts to sustain inflation in stock and commodity prices will also fail.