Canada’s inflation rate decelerated to 3.4 per cent in the year up to May, Statistics Canada said Tuesday, led by sharply lower gasoline prices. But beneath the headline slowdown in consumer prices, many facets of the cost of living are still increasing at an eye-watering pace. Grocery prices went up at an almost nine per cent pace.

  • GrindingGears
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    1 year ago

    You aren’t wrong. The problem with making the economic decisions they make, is they are taking data for time already passed and making based decisions on how they think the economy will react in the future, knowing what they know. It’s also an international problem for sure, really the core of it is that debts been too free for far too long, and then COVID hit, meaning all the major world economies had to print their way out of it, worrying about the consequences later. And I think that the data shows that was still the right decision at the time. But now we are in the dealing with the fallout stage, and I mean the major central banks have so far done fairly well. The problem is now, there’s also been some rogue actors taking advantage of the situation, and reaping larger and larger profits, without recourse. If you look at the major telecoms (government protected), the major banks (government protected), the major airlines (largely government protected, and free to act without retribution due to the lack of government interest in doing so). The automakers (who are de facto government protected), the groceriers (government protected by way of no competition and a clear government aversion to act on what’s pretty clearly collusion and anti-competitive behavior). Basically there’s a common theme here, Canadian consumers are getting hosed. And that’s also driving inflation, and its only the government that can interfere and regulate, the central bank has no jurisdiction here.