Deflation

Currently at Toronto Pearson: 11. High today: 14.

Now is that early-to-mid-October time when all us low-rent types shiver in our boxes until the landlord turns the heat on. I see the building across the road has heat, as people are opening their windows.

If you read the Globe regularly or otherwise keep up with the often-dizzyingly-contradictory pronouncements of the top Canadian economists, you will not be hearing this here first, but it bears repeating, because it's going to take a while to sink in, and a lot of people won't ever believe it: we could have deflation in Canada before long. There was one headline about this in the Globe last month; I've just gotten around to looking at the StatsCan inflation report for August, which the news was very excited about because it showed the highest rate of inflation since 2003 (!), and the signs are there: while the CPI for energy was up 20% year-over-year, it was down 3% month-over-month. Goods overall: +3.5% year-over-year, -0.5 month-over-month. Transportation: +5.8% year-over-year; -2.1% month-over-month. I guess--and I'm only guessing--the one that will determine whether we actually go into deflation or not will be shelter, which was up 5.8% year-over-year and up 0.4% month-over-month, which, incredibly, since we're all talking about the cooling real estate market and also about inflation in food prices, is still higher than the month-over-month rate of inflation for food. Then again, I guess the dollar losing a cent a day against the US$ might have something to say about it. I'm just guessin' here, like everybody.

My other favourite bit of statistics today: according to the latest Harris-Decima tracking poll,
the Conservatives are now in fourth place among single Canadian women. The Greens and the Liberals are tied for second, behind the NDP.

Uh, by the way, has anyone seen a TV ad from the Liberals during this campaign? I'm seeing Green ads just about every day, not to mention the bunches of Conservative and NDP ads; I don't specifically recall seeing a Liberal ad. I think I probably saw one or two, a couple of weeks ago, but I'm not sure.