It's The Economy, Stupid

At the risk of another round of threats and pitchforks, I can’t resist another little jab at the media over this NB Power thing. I caught – just about 20 minutes of the Rogers call in show today of course…

I’ve been asked at least a dozen times in the past 24 hours if I like the new NB Power/HQ deal.   Remember back to my reasoning for supporting the initial proposal: It resets NB Power’s cost structure to a much…

It’s been 13 years since former Premier Frank McKenna resigned and he still has pretty amazing resonance.  I was in a room of maybe 25 people today and the speaker made a passing reference to ‘Frank’ – not ‘Frank McKenna,…

The Canadian Press is running a story (picked up here) about seven firms that have received funding from ACOA for the past 20 years.  This is a classic case of what I have been talking about.  Read the article and…

A few weeks ago someone posted here that guys like me need to shoulder much of the blame for New Brunswick’s inability to chart a new and successful economic course.   It was in response, I think, to a comment I…

I just read the Globe & Mail story on the CBoC report on magnet cities.  I read five or six of these comparisons each year and you can poke holes in the all.  Consider the MacLean’s crime report which has ‘Codiac’…

I’d love to get the opportunity to get involved in economic development in a place like Haiti.  I’ve read Hernando De Soto’s work and other best practices in third world economic development and I think it is possible to take…

Two large call centre closure announcements in the past week.    Eddie Bauer just announced they are shutting down their Saint John facility.  Eddie Bauer went into bankruptcy protection a year ago – I suspected they would look to outsource their…

I have said many times that I prefer that a jurisdiction make an effort to have a competitive corporate tax rate (around the average among competitor jursidictions) and then use targeted tax cuts to incentivize specific behaviour (like business investment).…

The employment level in December in New Brunswick dropped fairly substantially.  As I have pointed out many times before, there are always going to be swings in the monthly data.  The important thing to look at is the trending over…