TD BANK说：2009狼来了！

yxia · 发表于 2009-3-12 15:40

Half million Canadians to lose jobs this year, TD Bank says
Julian Beltrame, THE CANADIAN PRESS
March 12, 2009
OTTAWA - Canada is suffering through one of the worst recessions in decades, one that will see more than half a million people thrown out of work, corporate profits tumble and household wealth decline sharply, says the Toronto-Dominion Bank.

In one of the gloomiest economic outlooks of any major forecaster, the TD Bank rejects relative rosy forecasts by the federal government and the Bank of Canada that predict a painful but short recession.

Rather, TD says, the recession will be painful and long.

"There is no doubt that 2009 will go down in the history books as one of the most difficult economic years for Canadians," said Beata Caranci, the bank's director of economic forecasting.

The bank says the economy will shrink 2.4 per cent this year - twice the rate projected by the Bank of Canada - and will only stop falling in the fourth quarter. Next year will be slightly better with a 1.3 per cent advance, but nowhere near the central bank's predicted 3.8 per cent bounceback.

The report also contradicts Prime Minister Stephen Harper's and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's contention that Canada will lead the U.S. and the rest of the world out of the recession.

A separate forecast from the Royal Bank is more sanguine, although with a projection of 2.6 per cent growth in 2010, it too is predicting a more muted recovery than that foreseen by the Bank of Canada.

"The odds are Canada will outperform the U.S. in the recovery period," said RBC chief economist Craig Wright, although he stressed that all forecasters are making projections in an atmosphere permeated by uncertainty.

"The problem is we're seeing violent volatility. We're seeing moves in the financial markets in one day we used to see in one year."

Caranci said since Canada's return to prosperity is heavily contingent upon a U.S. recovery, it's unlikely it can do better than rebound in tandem with its main trading partner. In either case, both will have muted recoveries at best, she says, something with which Wright concurs.

In fact, the TD bank says the economy won't return to a "normal, steady state" for at least five years.

"We don't see a robust recovery, because there are too many risks on the downside. Three months ago we only had three risks, now we're up to five."

For Canadian workers, it will be a long recession.

The bank projects shrinking employment until the second quarter of 2010, by which time 583,000 Canadians will have lost their jobs and the unemployment rate will have ballooned from 5.9 per cent last winter to 10 per cent.

The accumulated job losses are more than the 462,000 that were thrown onto the unemployment rolls during the 1990-91 recession, and near levels reached in the early 1980s slump.

Canada lost 129,000 jobs in January and a consensus of economists believe another 50,000 contraction will be reported by Statistics Canada for February. The report is released Friday morning.

The high number of expected job losses dominated Parliament for most of the week, with Flaherty accusing Liberals senators of stalling passage of his stimulus budget that extends employment insurance benefits.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff announced Thursday that the Senate will pass the Conservative stimulus budget by the end of the day, saying the senators had only recently discovered the employment benefits were backdated and would take effect as soon as the bill passed. Senators were told of the backdating on Tuesday.

"Never will a Liberal put himself between the unemployed and employment insurance," Ignatieff said.

The government, with some backing from the International Monetary Fund, maintains the economy will begin to recover somewhat in the third quarter and rebound strongly, in part due to its $40-billion stimulus package and lower interest rates.

But the TD bank gives minimal importance to the stimulus, estimating it will boost activity at about one-third the level the government claims.

It's best-case scenario is for a 0.5 per cent impact on gross domestic product this year, not enough to save Canadians and Canadians businesses from the shock the worst year the world economy has suffered since the Great Depression.

The impact on Canada, the bank says, will be felt in a collapse of corporate profits to about two-thirds last year's levels, individual income declines for three quarters, and falling wealth, a point made by parliamentary budget officer Kevin Page in his report Wednesday.

"With nominal (gross domestic product) to decline in 2009 as a whole (by 4.5 per cent) for the first time on record, this will come to bear on employment, wages, capital investment and government revenues as the year rolls forward," the bank report states.

西红柿酸 · 发表于 2009-3-12 19:07

walleye88 · 发表于 2009-3-12 20:54

积重难返. 一下子恐怕难扭转.

自由的像风 · 发表于 2009-3-12 20:54

yingxiy · 发表于 2009-3-14 09:01

Pumbaa · 发表于 2009-3-14 09:58

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