Today in the economy

[Kirkland Laing]

Here's one year charts of the Toronto Stock Exchange and the Toronto Dominion Bank. If this is a big economy least affected, I'd hate to see the worst affected.

A recession and a global financial system meltdown has quite an adverse effect on any stock market index or financial stock so looking at the numbers right now doesn't give you the real picture. The measuring stick is solvency. None of Canada's banks are bankrupt and they haven't needed a bailout to remain solvent either. Despite already having been bailed out with trillions of dollars, major US/European/Asian banks are all bankrupt.

OK, if we are talking about bank solvency, then perhaps we are better off in some respects. But when it comes down to the usual recession and market issues and impact to the average person because of what has happened, Canada is not really that much better off than anyone else, which is the point I was making.

I was kind of hoping your PM would stick to the no stimulus policy so we could have a control experiment in a major economy to compare to countries that had one. Sorry about that. And having a solvent banking system definitely makes you better off. You won't have to raise trillions in taxes over the next few decades to pay for late 2000s losses by your banks unlike other major economies.