Posted on September 23, 2010
United States
• Foreign currency policy captured headlines this week as Japan intervened to devalue the Yen, and pressures mounted on China to accelerate its appreciation of the RMB.
• Currency interventions are limiting the potential impact of U.S. export growth during the recovery. This is a challenge for America , because a rapid improvement in the terms of trade would go along way to aiding the recovery, as indebtedness impedes consumer spending.
• The prospects for quantitative easing (QE) could create an interesting dynamic in currency markets, as foreign countries react to a possible decline in the USD.
• In the end, not every economy can rely on exports to support growth.
Canada
• The robust pace of Canadian economic growth recorded since the third quarter of 2009 is likely to moderate, reflecting a slow recovery in global demand and a combination of domestic risks.
• Most notably, record levels of household indebtedness, which drove high levels of consumer spending in the past nine months, will now put downward pressure on spending as households become more cautious.
• This will have a particularly adverse impact on the housing market, which recorded massive gains over the course of 2009, driven largely by this debt-fuelled spending spree.
• We expect the cooling in consumer spending to feed into the downturn in the housing market, which has already begun and will persist throughout the remainder of 2010 and a large part of 2011.