The Canadian central bank is cautioning that tighter US monetary policy might spill across the border and further suppress Canadian inflation already weighed down by plunging oil prices.
A Canadian bond-market gauge of expected annual inflation over the next decade, known as the break-even rate, tumbled last week to almost the lowest level since 2009 as commodities fell and Chinese stocks led a international equities rout.
Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz warned that rising US interest rates might increase Canadian borrowing costs, further curbing price gains by discouraging business and consumer spending.
Canada must keep an independent monetary policy as the US Federal Reserve raises interest rates, Poloz said in a speech on Thursday last week in Ottawa.
Rising US bond yields typically lead to similar moves for Canadian debt, which he said could create downside risk to Canada’s 2 percent inflation target. The Canadian dollar fell to a 12-year low this month on speculation the central bank might lower its lending benchmark as soon as Jan. 20, after it twice cut rates last year as oil prices fell.
“What Poloz wants to make sure is Canada doesn’t import the [US] Fed’s policy,” said Sebastien Lavoie, assistant chief economist at Laurentian Bank Securities in Montreal, and a former researcher at the central bank.
The Bank of Canada has stronger control over short-term rates through its policy lever than it does over the five-year bond yields that influence rates consumers pay on their mortgages, Poloz said in his speech.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day