AND YET – Sound bites of data give mixed messages.
If you have found yourself bewildered by the steady stream of economic data, don’t worry you are not alone. In a few hours we compiled a small sample of the Canadian media reports and data supplied by government and corporations.
Here is what we discovered:
There has been a decline in credit card applications by 11% since the recession in 2008. Credit Card balances have dropped by 3.7% in last quarter of 2012 and cash and debit account for 62% of all Canadian purchases AND YET Consumer debt is at the highest recorded levels ever in Canada.
Equifax reported Canadians are paying down their debt faster and delinquencies are on a slight decline AND YET the Office of the Superintendent of bankruptcy reported that the total insolvencies of both bankruptcies and consumer proposals increased by 7% year over year in their most recent report.
Statistics Canada Reported there are 35 million people in Canada and only 254,700 Canadians are in the Top 1% of income earners, which requires of at least $201,400 of income per year to join AND YET The real estate boards indicate One in Five homes in Vancouver sell for more than 1 million dollars. To support a $1 million dollar mortgage the income required is over $250,000 per year.
Vancouver BC homes 5000 homes listed for sale over $1 million dollars AND YET there were only 7000 homes in all of the United States that sold for over $1 Million dollars in one month.
With all this contradictory data it is not surprising that the average Canadian does not have a clear outlook on the state of the economy for 2013. Even the Government of Canada’s best policy makers have recently had to revise their forecast on growth of the Canadian economy.