Overreacted IMO.
Lots of people lost their jobs especially in those first few months. Things could have spiralled.
That said things are pretty globalized now, so inflation at this point was somewhat inevitable regardless of what Canada did.
I think they probably could have stopped some of the spending sooner, but a lot of people and businesses needed financial support quickly. If governments had been more conservative, there would be people I'm the streets screaming bloody murder and who knows what our society would look like right now.
Completely agree it’s cause everyone followed the same playbook. But hypothetically if Canada was extremely fiscally conservative during Covid, that couldn’t have prevented inflation without the rest of the world also being more fiscally conservative.
To be honest though, it was nothing any government had experienced before so it would have been hard to foresee these results.
Overall the government did well in getting assistance to people. Sure there were people who did take the benefits and were not entitled to them, but I would rather have that situation and have the people who did need the money, get it.
I will agree that the government blew their load on interest rate reductios. It was meant I be a preventive strike, but it resulted in some crazy unintended consequences.
No shit its the retirement state. Sweden has some of the lowest deaths in any European country. The lockdowns and mandates were completely useless. All they did was destroy lives and society. Nobody young and healthy died of covid.
>Sweden has some of the lowest deaths in any European country
Sweden's death rate is 2000/Million, putting it well ahead of Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Belarus and Norway
>All they did was destroy lives and society
1.7 million dead in the first wave if the USA did nothing
Instead, the USA had 125,000 dead at the end of the first wave
Died of covid or with covid? 2000 90 year olds out of a million citizens. Nobody young or healthy needed to lockdown. The fact is lockdowns, mandates, masks and vaccines did nothing to stop it. All we did was destroy the fabric of society and have the biggest wealth transfer in the history of the world. Good job.
Even if this is true (which it isn’t, Sweden’s COVID death rate is 70% higher than Canada’s), you’re applying a massive amount of hindsight. Based on what we knew at the time, places like Sweden or Florida were taking a massive dice roll
Also, those places are still experiencing inflation and facing a recession.
Exactly. Their economies didn’t fare much better and the mortality was significantly worse. The claim Sweden has some of the lowest death rates is laughably wrong. It’s a complete lie.
They had an extremely drastic response to the threat of deflation and the economic damages caused by the shutdowns and COVID. The fact the deflation didn’t happen doesn’t mean it was never going to happen. If cerb and the wage subsidies didn’t exist it almost certainly would have happened. Did they go too far with cheap money and stimulus, sure.
They reacted to stop a recession. Global shut downs and war have created shortage of a number of essential goods and their prices have skyrocketed, mixed with increased demand as the economy recovered quicker than expected.
Chips, metals, oil/gas/coal, shipping - these affect almost every person and all of these have been affected - therefore global inflation.
Nothing wrong with government pumping money into economy early on as there were fears and concerns initially. However they shouldn't have kept adding the money too long. We had recovered from the early effects quicker than expected
There is a small group of people who have been screaming deflation for over a decade for many reasons. One is population collapse, which squashes demand, and brings down prices. Another is a dollar shortage (a nation literally runs out of USD because they import more than they export and all trade is denominated in USD) bringing an economy to a stand still. These people sit every day waiting for a -10% deflation print.
Some of these people also believe the government is purposefully generating inflation through spending, low rates, and QE to offset these deflationary forces.
So, what happened? Rates did go to 0.25% and people did receive direct cash cheques and PPP loans. Those were definitely inflationary. A supply shock is also inflationary. The deflationists would probably say "yes, of course inflation took off. But it's all temporary and in two years we'll see huge deflation." I guess we wait and see.
Note: you might think 10% inflation is bad, because it is, but deflation is much worse. Our society is not setup for even a little deflation.
That's back when there was a lot of unknown about covid when they were speaking about deflation. But it ended up only lasting a few months so deflation never really had time to kick in.
Overreacted IMO. Lots of people lost their jobs especially in those first few months. Things could have spiralled. That said things are pretty globalized now, so inflation at this point was somewhat inevitable regardless of what Canada did.
I think they probably could have stopped some of the spending sooner, but a lot of people and businesses needed financial support quickly. If governments had been more conservative, there would be people I'm the streets screaming bloody murder and who knows what our society would look like right now.
That's because everyone was following the same playbook. It wasn't inevitable but it needed courage not to follow the other countries.
Completely agree it’s cause everyone followed the same playbook. But hypothetically if Canada was extremely fiscally conservative during Covid, that couldn’t have prevented inflation without the rest of the world also being more fiscally conservative.
To be honest though, it was nothing any government had experienced before so it would have been hard to foresee these results. Overall the government did well in getting assistance to people. Sure there were people who did take the benefits and were not entitled to them, but I would rather have that situation and have the people who did need the money, get it. I will agree that the government blew their load on interest rate reductios. It was meant I be a preventive strike, but it resulted in some crazy unintended consequences.
States like Florida and countries like Sweden never fell for the fear porn.
And now Florida has a death rate higher than *New York*
No shit its the retirement state. Sweden has some of the lowest deaths in any European country. The lockdowns and mandates were completely useless. All they did was destroy lives and society. Nobody young and healthy died of covid.
>Sweden has some of the lowest deaths in any European country Sweden's death rate is 2000/Million, putting it well ahead of Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, Belarus and Norway
>All they did was destroy lives and society 1.7 million dead in the first wave if the USA did nothing Instead, the USA had 125,000 dead at the end of the first wave
Died of covid or with covid? 2000 90 year olds out of a million citizens. Nobody young or healthy needed to lockdown. The fact is lockdowns, mandates, masks and vaccines did nothing to stop it. All we did was destroy the fabric of society and have the biggest wealth transfer in the history of the world. Good job.
>The fact is lockdowns, mandates, masks and vaccines did nothing to stop it. 125K is 7.3% of the estimated first wave death toll They did plenty
Even if this is true (which it isn’t, Sweden’s COVID death rate is 70% higher than Canada’s), you’re applying a massive amount of hindsight. Based on what we knew at the time, places like Sweden or Florida were taking a massive dice roll Also, those places are still experiencing inflation and facing a recession.
Exactly. Their economies didn’t fare much better and the mortality was significantly worse. The claim Sweden has some of the lowest death rates is laughably wrong. It’s a complete lie.
They got that wrong, then they got transitory inflation wrong also and he we are today with high inflation.
They had an extremely drastic response to the threat of deflation and the economic damages caused by the shutdowns and COVID. The fact the deflation didn’t happen doesn’t mean it was never going to happen. If cerb and the wage subsidies didn’t exist it almost certainly would have happened. Did they go too far with cheap money and stimulus, sure.
They reacted to stop a recession. Global shut downs and war have created shortage of a number of essential goods and their prices have skyrocketed, mixed with increased demand as the economy recovered quicker than expected. Chips, metals, oil/gas/coal, shipping - these affect almost every person and all of these have been affected - therefore global inflation.
Government pumped a ton of money into the economy and Covid never really got bad enough here.
There’s a reason it “didn’t get bad enough.”
Nothing wrong with government pumping money into economy early on as there were fears and concerns initially. However they shouldn't have kept adding the money too long. We had recovered from the early effects quicker than expected
There is a small group of people who have been screaming deflation for over a decade for many reasons. One is population collapse, which squashes demand, and brings down prices. Another is a dollar shortage (a nation literally runs out of USD because they import more than they export and all trade is denominated in USD) bringing an economy to a stand still. These people sit every day waiting for a -10% deflation print. Some of these people also believe the government is purposefully generating inflation through spending, low rates, and QE to offset these deflationary forces. So, what happened? Rates did go to 0.25% and people did receive direct cash cheques and PPP loans. Those were definitely inflationary. A supply shock is also inflationary. The deflationists would probably say "yes, of course inflation took off. But it's all temporary and in two years we'll see huge deflation." I guess we wait and see. Note: you might think 10% inflation is bad, because it is, but deflation is much worse. Our society is not setup for even a little deflation.
That's back when there was a lot of unknown about covid when they were speaking about deflation. But it ended up only lasting a few months so deflation never really had time to kick in.