A glance at the business headlines over the past week might have left you thinking the world was on a fast track to economic Armageddon.
Markets crashed. There were renewed warnings about the inverted yield curve, which, almost bizarrely, has moved from economic arcana to bar chatter. Banks in Denmark offered to pay interest to mortgage seekers to encourage them to borrow money. The world seemed to have turned upside down.
For Canadians trying to comprehend our place amid reports of chaos, this week offers two more beads on the thread of Canada’s ever-evolving economic story, inflation on Wednesday and retail sales on Friday.
And whether we are whistling past the graveyard, or somehow strangely sheltered from the global economic turmoil, there are plenty of indications Canada is not following a path insinuated by the past week’s gnashing of teeth. At least not yet.
“We are currently at a time of a lot of uncertainty,” said economist Farah Omran last week. “Domestically the Canadian economy is doing fine. Housing seems to be rebounding while employment is good.”
